[ncdnhc-discuss] About Marketing Practices in .ORG

[Dave Crocker]

At 08:52 AM 12/28/2001 -0800, Kent Crispin wrote:
>On Fri, Dec 28, 2001 at 08:06:52AM -0800, Dave Crocker wrote:
> > 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
>
>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, ...
>
>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.

(sorry for the long quoting, but the context of this is important.)

1.  I'm not sure I see the contradiction you are claiming.

         If you believe I am saying "there was no well-established 
restriction" vs. "yes there was":  My vague recollection is that there was 
a bit of enforcement (or, at least, pressure) of registration restriction 
for the first few years, but that feel away.  Debating exactly when is not 
as important as noting that it was a long time ago.

         If my comment about registry/registar policy is the apparent 
source of contradiction, what I meant was that actually marketing .org -- 
and especially the fear-based marketing of it to be an echo of .com -- is 
extremely recent.  So, putting in a restriction against marketing does 
reflect actual practise until very recently.  I should have said practise 
rather than policy.

2.  The matter of gTLD "charters" is a bit confusing.  The original 
statements were certainly statements of "intent" for the strings.  I do not 
recall just how strongly they were expected (or were actually) enforced.  A 
few, like .edu, .mil and .arpa, were certainly under absolute 
pre-registration enforcement.  My recollection is that com/net/org were 
never that strict, though as I note above, there might have been 
some.  Hence the difference between "intent" anything stronger, such as is 
currently meant by "charter".


>  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.

what is the guidance we get from this fact?  .org's history is what it 
is.  my concern is that we not try to impose major changes on the actual 
details of registration or dispute, because it will disrupt a long-standing 
TLD.


> > In terms of cost, I worry that enforcing any policy about who may register
> > (or who may keep a registration) will raise costs.
>
>The UDRP has not significantly raised the cost of registrations in .com,

The UDRP:

         a) resolved a long-standing matter of serious ambiguity and 
difficulty.  we have no such issues with current .org registrations, so the 
danger is that attempts to tailor the UDRP for distinctive .org policies 
will actually CREATE problems.  It will be trying to fix problems that do 
not yet exist.  That in turn will increase costs.


>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.

More generally, it is intended to take the entire matter of disputes 
between claimants away from the registry.  Getting them out of the line of 
fire was -- and remains -- a major goal in the design of the UDRP.


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

Although logical, I've no idea what data substantiates this claim, nor any 
sense of how to ensure that it applies to the .org design under discussion.


> > 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.

We have roughly 10 years of interesting history with domain name 
disputes.  Until the UDRP, that history was very messy and very costly.  It 
also involved a number of attempts to "fix" the problem.  Those efforts 
failed miserably.  And the UDRP only came to fruitition after roughly 5 
years of debate.

I consider any such process to be a risky process.  It does not matter that 
the current UDRP appears to function quite well.  What matters is how 
difficult it was to get to that point.  THAT is a functional definition of 
risky.


> > 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.
>
>This is a good point, but I suspect that the number of problem cases is
>actually quite low.

Now, yes.  However if we go and make any interesting new policies for .org, 
I am claiming they will impact existing registrants.  And yes, I largely do 
not care how much we try to protect them.  In fact, any significant effort 
to protect them will probably end up making things worse either for them or 
for new registrants.  Or both.

In other words, if we mess with basic policy, we will get a significant 
increase in problems.


> > 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...

And I am suggesting that the way to achieve that that is best for the 
registrants is to impose limits on registry/registrars, rather than on 
registrants.

d/


----------
Dave Crocker  <mailto:dcrocker at brandenburg.com>
Brandenburg InternetWorking  <http://www.brandenburg.com>
tel +1.408.246.8253;  fax +1.408.273.6464