[ncdnhc-discuss] About Marketing Practices in .ORG

[Kent Crispin]

On Fri, Dec 28, 2001 at 08:06:52AM -0800, Dave Crocker wrote:
> As a beginning point, I'll comment that I think the issue is NOT whether 
> the model you are describing is reasonable.  It sounds entirely reasonable 
> and enforceable.

Likewise :-)  However, I think you misinterpret the history.  You say:

> In terms of history, it simply seems highly inappropriate to take a TLD 
> that has had essentially no registration policy for more than 10 years and 
> then to impose one with seriously different criteria for 
> registration.

and later you say:

> BY contrast, restrictions of the registry and its registrars is much 
> narrower and oddly would mostly reflect a continuation of long-term policy 
> rather than a change.  (Yes, some registrars have been marketing .org as a 
> .com echo, but a) that is only in very recent years, and b) forcing them to 
> change their marketing does not affect end-users.)

The fact is, as you indicate above, that .org has *not* been run as a
pure unrestricted TLD until relatively recently.  .org always has had a
charter; the only issue is the matter of enforcement.  And in fact,
while it is intrinsically hard to come up with hard figures on this
subject, experience shows that there are *very* few registrations in
.org that are not a) defensive registrations by an entity that has the
same .com name, or b) non-commercial.

In short, I look at the history and the current registrant base, and I
see something that is fairly close to what the original charter of .org
(rfc1591) indicates. 

> Absent a massively compelling problem that needs fixing, 
> policy changes of this degree should be imposed from the start of the TLD; 
> ie, as formative precepts, not as changes.

Yes.  I would say that the formative precepts for .org come from
rfc1591, and that since its inception it's intended use is for 
non-commercial entities.

> In terms of cost, I worry that enforcing any policy about who may register 
> (or who may keep a registration) will raise costs.  You are suggesting that 
> the enforcement be at dispute time, rather than earlier, and yes, that 
> could keep the costs down.

The UDRP has not significantly raised the cost of registrations in .com,
at the registry or the registrar level.  At one level, of course, the 
whole point of a DRP is to shield the registration function from the 
cost of resolving disputes, and to move the costs to the disputants.  
If you add in the cost of risk, registrations that are comfortably 
within policy have low cost, registrations on the edges have high 
costs.

That is, names with potential TM conflicts, on average, and considering 
"total cost of ownership", cost more than ones with no such problems.

> In terms of risk, the area of dispute resolution has now established a 
> lengthy and clear history of being quite difficult.

I'm not sure what you mean by that ("In terms of risk..."?).  The UDRP 
is certainly not perfect, but the general mechanism seems to work quite 
well. 

>  My guess is that 
> Restricted TLDs need to develop a common UDRP framework, with differences 
> being in details rather than basic UDRP policy.  At the least anything less 
> makes it more difficult for judges to be consistent.

Agreed.

> In terms of fairness, differential policies for registration will lead to 
> changes in the treatment of existing registrants.  Existing registrants who 
> do not qualify according to the new policy will receive second-class 
> treatment.  In effect, they will be invited to go elsewhere -- the term 
> hostile work environment comes to mind -- and yet they have done nothing 
> inappropriate.  To the extent that we might try to have the rules provide 
> an exception for existing registrants, such exceptions in contracts -- just 
> like exceptions in a protocol specification -- have a tendency of creating 
> far more problems than they eliminate.

This is a good point, but I suspect that the number of problem cases is 
actually quite low.  I believe that most registrations in .org by 
commercial organizations are defensive in nature; if the charter for 
.org was more rigidly enforced the perceived need for defensive 
registrations would drop.

> If we had some sort of crisis about non-commercial domain name 
> registration, then these problems might be worth imposing on .org.  However 
> we can easily start with one or more new TLDs and impose things from the 
> start, leaving .org to be consistent with its history of registrants.

Re my comments about history -- that is exactly what I have in mind.

> The reason I was (and am) liking the idea of .org restrictions on the 
> registry and its registrants, rather than on registrants, is that it is 
> highly narrow, and it does not directly hit the (existing) end-users.

It seems inevitable that, one way or another, there will be contractual
limits that prevent .org from being an effective competitor to .com...

Kent

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Be good, and you will be
kent at songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain