[ncdnhc-discuss] Mission creep and consumer protection

[James Love]

Alejandro,

1.     The question of mission creep is a good one.

2.      ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers,
and it chooses the companies that can assign domain names.  It has made
trademark protection part of its mission, by requiring registries and
registrars to address in some way trademark concerns.  It has monitored some
abusive registration practices, according to ICANN staff posts to the ga
list, to determine if there are pratices that other registrars think is
unfair.  It restricts entry into the TLD business, based upon what seems
like fairly onerous conditions on new entrants, to protect the public in
some way.  I assume that it has in the past promoted competition in the
registrar business in order to protect consumers from excessive prices.
That at least is what ICANN told the US Congress.  But I think it is true
that it has not show much interest in protecting consumers as much as
protecting competitors  -- a guess a sort of indirect method of consumer
protection.

3.    The concerns about consumer protection are real, and they are related
to what ICANN does (regulate entry into allocation of domain names),  but it
could possibly be done by someone else.   Is there a "specialized
organization" that looks at this issue?  My guess is that for the ccTLDs
this is something that can be done by the national governments.   In the
case of the gTLDs, historically, this was done by the US DOC, which for
example regulates the price of .com, .net and .org.    The case of .org is
particularly interesting, because Netsol will have to divest .org, and no
one knows for sure how the pricing decisions will be made.  If DOC gets out
of the game, that leaves 3 million .org registrations exposed.  Paricularly
if all of a sudden they are locked in to an unregulated pricing system by
some for profit entity that seeks to maximize its profits.   And, this is
also an interesting ICANN issue if there are more than one proposal, and
some would protect consumers on the pricing side, while others would not,
and ICANN picks the winner.

4.  I agree that that more clarity on this topic would be good, and that is
why I would like to see a staff paper on this issue, as it relates to the
most pressing issue, which is .org.  The staff could propose that ICANN take
zero interest in protecting consumers, if it wants, or propose something
elese.  Either way, it would be more clear than what we have now, which is
complete uncertainty over what will happen to .org domain name holders.

5.  Also, if ICANN wants to say that consumer protection is not its
business, then it might also explain the rationale for its other regulatory
functions.  I thought they were designed to protect consumers, by providing
for example high quality of service.

  Jamie

----- Original Message -----
From: "Alejandro Pisanty - DGSCA y FQ, UNAM" <apisan at servidor.unam.mx>
To: "James Love" <love at cptech.org>
Cc: <discuss at icann-ncc.org>
Sent: Friday, February 08, 2002 5:07 PM
Subject: Re: [ncdnhc-discuss] Consumer Protection resolution


> James,
>
> it would help much to understand how "consumer protection" is not mission
> creep. I see you have worded your proposal carefully but would benefit
> from more explicit clarification.
>
> It would also help to know why ICANN has to look at the consumer
> protection issues, at the risk of taking the job from specialized
> organizations. Considering the global reach of the Internet, and the wide
> non-uniformity of consumer protection around the world, your words in this
> respect will be welcome.
>
> Yours,
>
> Alejandro Pisanty
>
>
> .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .
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>      Dr. Alejandro Pisanty
> Director General de Servicios de Computo Academico
> UNAM, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico
> Av. Universidad 3000, 04510 Mexico DF Mexico
> Tel. (+52-55) 5622-8541, 5622-8542 Fax 5550-8405
> http://www.dgsca.unam.mx
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