RE: If PIR is violating its own advisory charter, why do they expect to have .org renewed?

[George Kirikos <gkirikos@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Vint,

The way presumptive renewal is written into the proposed contracts,
it's almost impossible to not renew them, even if the registries breach
their contracts. This has been analyzed by NSI and GoDaddy already, in
the public comments mailing lists.

Others (the user "Fundraiser" at DomainState, if  one followed the
links) have drawn the attention of the charter violation to PIR. They
don't appear to care. That's the kind of arrogance that develops in
entrenched monopolies. They're not as bad as VeriSign, though, yet....

ICANN has not explained how presumptive renewal is a good thing, versus
fixed term contracts. If you have a series of fixed length contracts,
with open bidding, and specifications for level of service, the only
variable is *PRICE* (i.e. the tender price that the prospective
contractor use to bid). The only scenario that the world is worse off
is if *no one* bids on a contract. That would never happen, though
(there's lots of prospective registry operators out there that are
willing to do the job). Given then that price is the only variable,
ICANN goes beyond stupidity and then gives the registry operator
unlimited pricing power! Certainly competitive tenders will always
produce a dominant result to that, since competitive bidders would
always agree to a price cap, and certainly competition would achieve a
lower price than a monopolist would pick under an unlimited pricing
power regime.

If presumptive renewal is so good, why doesn't ICANN agree to let *me*
be their sole-sourced electricity supplier, and allow me the ability to
set my own price for service, and give me presumptive renewal? :) I'd
immediately jackup the price by 1000%, and there'd be nothing you could
do about it. The reason ICANN wouldn't do it in for electricity or
phone service is the same reason registrants don't want it for domain
name services.

Indeed, as I pointed out earlier, Neustar is signing *extensions* to
their  telephone management contracts that don't contain presumptive
renewal, and yet also are reflecting price *decreases*.

http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/ga/msg04807.html

It is perfectly consistent to have renewals of contracts with price
cuts, and allow the registry operators to have enough money to invest
in infrastructure, yet share the benefits of
economies of scale with consumers.

Certainly telephone database management is very similarly
technologically to DNS database management, with similar cost
structures and economies of scale. If Neustar could live without
presumptive renewal there, they and others can certainly live without
it in the .biz/info/org TLDs. My longer comments are at:

http://forum.icann.org/lists/biz-tld-agreement/msg00907.html

Sincerely,

George Kirikos
http://www.kirikos.com/

--- Vint Cerf <vint@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> George,  
> 
> Presumptive renewal does not preclude the possibility that an
> organization
> would not automatically be renewed. It would depend very much on the
> nature
> of the inadequacy that might induce a decision to call for bids
> instead of
> automatically renewing.
> 
> I assume you've drawn attention of PIR to this anomaly in the
> population of
> their advisory group? 
> 
> Vint
>  
> 
> 
> Vinton G Cerf
> Chief Internet Evangelist
> Google
> Regus Suite 384
> 13800 Coppermine Road
> Herndon, VA 20171
>  
> +1 703 234-1823
> +1 703-234-5822 (f)
>  
> vint@xxxxxxxxxx
> www.google.com
>  
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: George Kirikos [mailto:gkirikos@xxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: Friday, October 13, 2006 12:21 AM
> To: ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx; org-tld-agreement@xxxxxxxxx
> Cc: john.jeffrey@xxxxxxxxx; vint@xxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: If PIR is violating its own advisory charter, why do they
> expect to
> have .org renewed?
> 
> Hello,
> 
> According to the .org Advisory Council Charter:
> 
> http://www.pir.org/PDFs/pir_ac_charter.pdf
> 
> "Section 3:... No two members of the Council will be from the same
> non-commercial organization."
> 
> Michael Mann and Angela Stuber are both from Grassroots.org:
> 
> http://www.pir.org/AboutPIR/CouncilMembers.aspx
>
http://www.grassroots.org/page.ww?section=Highlights&name=Content+Detail+-+V
> olunteer
>
http://www.grassroots.org/page.ww?section=About&name=Board+of+Directors
> 
> Apparently, when this was brought to the attention of PIR, instead of
> rectifying the issue, they "did not see a problem with it".
> 
>
http://www.domainstate.com/showthread.php3?s=&postid=327276#post327276
> 
> I have nothing against Grassroots.org, but perhaps ICANN and the
> public
> should seriously consider whether PIR, an organization that seemingly
> has no
> regard for their own charter, should be operating such an important
> registry
> as .org. Indeed, with presumptive renewal, it would be next to
> impossible to
> remove a registry operator.
> 
> This is yet another reason why presumptive renewal should never exist
> in any
> registry agreement.
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> George Kirikos
> http://www.kirikos.com/
> 
>