Money Spinner?

["Michele Neylon :: Blacknight" <michele@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

One of my concerns with this proposal is that without there being a certain 
degree of transparency there is very little to stop the registry operator from 
putting a lot of the names up for auction directly.

While it is interesting that Afilias make reference to both .mobi and .asia 
several times in the document the parallels between .mobi and .info are, to my 
mind, ill placed.

Dotmobi serves a specific user community and has provided a growing number of 
tools to users to help them develop mobile sites. A lot of the funding for this 
activity comes from auctions and other activities

What does Afilias intend to do with any monies it raises from this exercise?

While I am not asking Afilias to become a charity over night I would seriously 
question their underlying motives for the auctions.

While there is mention of excess funds being reallocated the continued 
reference to Afilias' discretion disturbs me.

Also I would question the validity of some parts of these proposals. The 
following, for example, strikes me as  incredibly naive:

"Returning a portion to registrants of .INFO domain names in the form of
registration fee reductions to registrars;"

Registrants won't benefit from that. Registrars obviously will, but that 
Afilias would affirm that this would benefit registrants is either misinformed, 
misleading or simply naive.

It would make a lot more sense if Afilias were to focus their resources on 
promoting the appropriate usage of the .info TLD.

It would also make more sense to me at least if the registry operator were to 
make this process as transparent as possible.

Regards

Michele

--
Mr Michele Neylon
Blacknight Solutions
Hosting & Colocation, Brand Protection
http://www.blacknight.com/
http://blog.blacknight.com/
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