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

[Jothan Frakes <jothan@xxxxxxxxx>]

Agreed.  I think you have made a good point within one 'harm' that is the
severity and/or is it harm in opinion or fact.

There may be registries that are intending to auction a small allocation of
domains to help offset the costs of the application and those that the many,
many, many delays have introduced.

Many view auction as acceptible and reasonable; some do not.  This seems a
difference of opinion.

The auction 'harm' seems a lot smaller to me than front-running activity
through the use of epp-check, whois, or dns logs.

It would be helpful in our work to run through Mikey's list of harms and for
each:
a) identify some gauge of the severity of a harm (scale of 1-5, 1 being
least, 5 being highest), and

b) if it is one of opinion or proven in fact, in addition to

c) if it is hypothetical or has been sighted in practice, and

d) who is claiming harm, and

e) who is allegedly harmed.

Did I miss any of the elements we should look at?

I think that perhaps even taking a poll (ooh goody!)  would help us to
identify those harms that we should focus our energy on.

If we were to identify those a-e elements per harm, we'd quickly recognize
those of opinion over actuality.

-jothan

jothan frakes

On Jul 27, 2010 6:08 PM, "Antony Van Couvering" <avc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:



Until logic and/or evidence are marshaled, talk about harm are just
assertions, opinions, and crystal-ball gazing.  Let's prioritize for harms
that are dangerous AND most likely to occur.

We should construct policies that deal with likely realities, and minimize
the amount of far-out what-ifs.  Otherwise we are like the lottery player
who is transfixed by the size of the jackpot and never considers the odds
before betting his life savings.  Adam Smith called the lottery "a tax on
stupidity" and I would hate to conform to that type, especially if those
being taxed are none other than ourselves.

"Demonstrated harms" + "known to occur" is greater than "feared harms" +
"never seen in the wild"

Likewise, "dangerous harms" + "easy to show how it could happen" is greater
than "the sky will fall" + "I don't know how, but someone will game it."

Let's also remember that from the ICANN perspective, which I think is the
one we are bound to adopt, harms to consumers rank much higher in the
pantheon than do harms to competitors in the space.  In this view (which is
that of the ICANN-sponsored economic studies as well), a monopoly is not bad
because it advantages one competitor over another, but because it is likely
(based on past experience) to end up costing the consumer more.

For instance, it remains to be shown that a registry extracting value from
high-value names is a consumer harm.  Think about domainers.  Just because
they don't have an official status at ICANN doesn't mean they're not an
important part of the ecosystem.   They are, effectively, another middleman
between the registry and the consumer.   They are not the end consumer.

For high-value names, the chain is NOT:

       Registries -> registrars -> consumers

INSTEAD, high-value names follow this path:

       Registries --> registrars --> domainers --> consumers

I fail to see how the consumer is harmed more by a registry conducting a
fair and scrutinized sale at market value, than by a domainer interposing
himself (it's nearly always a him) and acting as a speculative middleman.
Either way the price will be higher than for a bad name.  There are
tremendous benefits of having a registry delegate high-value names in a
different way than other names are sold.  For instance, a name could be sold
on a RFP basis, where the winner would undertake to develop the name in a
beneficial way.  I believe .mobi did something similar recently.

Finally, harms must be balanced against benefits.   Some harms are
acceptable if there are sufficient countervailing benefits. And public
benefits trump private harms:  I am harmed when they build a subway under my
house, but my inconvenience is overweighed by the public good of better
transport.

Antony



On Jul 27, 2010, at 5:05 PM, Eric Brunner-Williams wrote:

> No disagreement, however some harms c...