Re: [gnso-vi-feb10] Group on documenting "harms"

[Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mikey and Roberto,

In the development of a catalog of harms I have a few suggestions.

1. For each posited harm, ask what the necessary information or 
opportunities are, and if the harm is over-specified, that is, a facet 
of a "gem" of exploits of information, opportunity and absence of 
enforcement, and provide pointers to the appropriate literature.
E.g., for (land rush) auction systems, what benefits accrue to 
(registry operator) sellers who control some (registrar) bidders?
I know there are papers on some of the subjects, for instance quite a 
few in the auction literature.
I don't know if there is any utility in asking Staff if any of the 
Registrar compliance experience is available, and the last time I 
suggested using Staff resources (the CRAI SOW and its statement of 
harms) it was not a suggestion that anyone thought useful, but it is 
possible that Staff has some specific experience in economic acts that 
some Staff think worth review for suitability, either as acts to be 
avoided by policy, or illustrative of kinds of acts to be avoided by 
policy.
2. Use a spreadsheet or a wiki. A bullet list is just a temporary aid 
de memoire.
3. Dump the "potential harms from continued separation" as that is 
just advocacy. Our problem is to find what there are harms in change, 
not to find sufficient harms to motivate change.
We have to accept that some will see no "harm", or no compelling harm, 
in separation. Calling it a "harm" means we have treat the "no harms" 
claims from the Free Trade and allied integration advocates as equally 
meaningless. Neither seems particularly useful.
There is implied advocacy. It should be avoided.

3. Market power is absent from the bullet list. Some harms are 
predicated upon market power.
Eric