General comment on .net redelegation

[Karl Auerbach <karl@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The existing contract for .net (and .com) has no mechanism in it that 
drives (either by coercion or by incentive) to reduce internal operational 
costs and to pass some portion (hopefully the larger portion) onto the 
customers (registrars).

Without such a mechanism a registry, such as the winner of .net, will be 
able to reduce internal costs, reaping 100% of the savings as profit, but 
with no benefit to the registrars and, indirectly, to the public.

It is important that the new .net contractor be obligated to:

  a) Continuously review and refine its operations to reduce costs
     (without a negative effect on the ability of names in .net to
     be resolved 24x7x365)

  b) To pass a majority component of that savings to its customers who,
     in turn, will hopefully, pass them onto the consumers.  This
     component must be designed so that the .net registry has some
     profit motivation to improve its operational costs but it should
     not be so large as to be a windfall.

                --karl--
                Karl Auerbach