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Username: PhilBerent
Date/Time: Mon, November 13, 2000 at 3:55 PM GMT
Browser: Microsoft Internet Explorer V5.01 using Windows 95
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Subject: Affinity/bizTRAC Response to ICANN Staff Business Assessment

Message:
 

 
The following is written in response to the  “business elements” of the ICANN staff report on the Affinity/bizTRAC proposal.

Firstly, we thank the staff and note that they expressed no major reservations on our proposal in either the business or the technical aspects of our plan.

1. The Benefit of Creating a TLD Free of Speculation

We believe, however, that the staff review may not have fully considered the major benefit of our proposed TLD. Very simply, the primary objective of the proposed TLD is to create a name space where domain name hoarding and speculation do not occur. By achieving this in our TLD, we also expect to very significantly reduce these harmful practices throughout the Internet.

We maintain that “name scarcity”, which apparently is such a problem, is almost completely a result of “name hoarding” practices and frivolous registrations. After all approximately 80% of registered SLDs do not point to an active web site. (We define “frivolous registrations” as those which are made with no real intent of being actively used). This results in a situation where it is very difficult for a real business to establish a powerful presence on the net without paying ransom to a cybersquatters, or a name hoarder. Often this cost will be 10s or 100s of thousands of dollars. The experience of the average registrant is *not* paying $35 and getting the name they want. Rather most end up settling for a second best name or paying off a speculator.

If approved, our strict front end screening practices would create a haven free of name hoarding and speculation. All names in the TLD would cost $2,000. Because we would register far fewer names than an unrestricted domain, we believe that this would ensure that a new business would always be able to obtain a powerful name under our TLD. This in turn would mean that there would be very little incentive for registrants to buy any high priced names in the secondary market for names in .com or other TLDs – effectively our proposal would cap the price of the majority of secondary market sales across all TLDs at $2,000. Thus name speculators would be deprived of the opportunity of a “big score” and, we believe most would simply throw in the towel. In other words we believe that if approved our proposal would significantly reduce the practices of domain name hoarding and speculation across all TLDs.

2. bizTRAC

The staff report states “bizTRAC barely exists, and thus little experience resides there”.  We concede that bizTRAC is a new entity which is being built specifically to represent constituency interests in managing the TLD. However at the time of application we already had the CEO of a major registrar (BulkRegister.com) on the board, and 5 other individuals with extensive business, intellectual property, consumer rights, and general legal experience. Since submitting the proposal, the Confederation of British Industry (the major British business association) has stated in their note on this notice board that they envisage providing a representative to the board if we are awarded the TLD. Professor Graciela Chichilnisky of Columbia University has also agreed to serve. Graciela Chichilnisky has held the UNESCO chair in Mathematics and Economics at Columbia University since 1995 as well as many other prestigious government and academic appointments.

It is also our intention that we will add representatives from the business and IPC constituencies of the DNSO and to make full efforts to ensure that bizTRAC will as effectively as possible represent the interests of all constituencies effected by our operation.

3. Possibility of not meeting projections

The staff report states that “If few businesses chose to register, the registry might be under-funded for its requirements”. We believe that it is very unlikely that our initial projections will not be met and exceeded. Based on a reassessment and on new information we believe our initial projections of 10,000 names in the first year to have been very conservative. The new information is that dotTV, has apparently registered 100,000 names since May, many at a price of over $1,000. Making an exact estimate is of course impossible, but we belive it is very unlikely that we will not register at least the numbers projected. Note however, that our capital is sufficient if we register half this number. In our proposal we also show a “minimum maintenance scenario” which would allow us to maintain operations so as to serve existing customers with as few as 400 registrations per year.

4. Scalability of 7Ways Operation.

The partners of 7Ways have long experience in the technical field and extensive contacts world wide. The directors confirm that they believe that it would be easy for them to rapidly expand their operation. In addition Affinity has a large technical staff which could be temporarily be diverted to assisting 7Ways in the case of a faster than projected need for expansion.

5. Possibility of Accepting .inc TLD string

We confirm that we would be happy to accept the .inc string if it were offered to us. “.inc” of course implies “incorporated”. That is, it implies the existence of a real business – which is exactly the idea of our TLD. We therefore believe, on further consideration, that our concept would work as well, or nearly as well  with the .inc string as it would with .biz.

6. Other areas of flexibility in our proposal

We initially intended to start operations with only 2 registrars for an initial 6 month test period. On further consideration we would be prepared to open up registration to all ICANN registrars either after a 2 month test period, or even at once as specified by ICANN.

       
     

 


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