[gnso-vi-feb10] The potential harm of "resellers"

["Michael D. Palage" <michael@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello All,

Just to add to this discussion thread on the potential harm of resellers, I
would like to direct the group's attention to the original CRAI report which
addressed this situation with the following excerpt appearing on Page 13:

The current restriction on registry ownership of registrars does not appear
to preclude registries from owning resellers that purchase domain names at
wholesale from accredited registrars. Notably, VeriSign previously owned a
digital brand management entity, DBMS, which acted as a reseller for Tucows,
a large registrar.33 Although we are not aware of any other examples of such
relationships, registry ownership of resellers represents a potential
loophole in ICANN's registry agreement terms that could have unintended
effects. For example, a registry that owns a reseller may have an economic
incentive to discriminate in favor of the registrar that supplies its
affiliated reseller by providing that registrar with better access to
released names.

See http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/crai-report-24oct08-en.pdf 

Just trying to contribute factual data points where possible.

Best regards,

Michael