[ncdnhc-discuss] Re: Mission creep and consumer protection

[James Love]

I would like to respond to Milton's comments on who is doing what about
various consumer protection issues.  I agree that there is attention to
issues that concern rival registrars, such as slaming issues.   But I
haven't seen much about how registry prices are regulated by ICANN.  If
there is a solution to this, I would like to know what it is, particularly
given some big differences in registry prices in different tlds, and the
fact that historical policies on .org, .net and .com were determined by DOC,
but DOC was not involved in pricing of the new TLDs and pricing of ccTLDs
have been all over the map.    Jamie

----- Original Message -----
From: "Milton Mueller" <Mueller at syr.edu>
To: <love at cptech.org>; <apisan at servidor.unam.mx>
Cc: <discuss at icann-ncc.org>; <tbyfield at panix.com>
Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2002 7:06 PM
Subject: Re: [ncdnhc-discuss] Re: Mission creep and consumer protection


> >>> "Alejandro Pisanty - DGSCA y FQ, UNAM" <apisan at servidor.unam.mx>
02/10/02 12:45PM >>>
> > there is a difference between doing things in such a way that does not
> > harm consumers and becoming a consumer protection agency. The first
> > is a policy issue and I'm all ears for input. The second is mission
creep,
>
> There may be a difference, but it sits somewhere on a slippery slope.
> The "transfers" task force provides a perfect example. Is Verisign
> abusing its hold on registrants by refusing to let go of names that
> people want to transfer? Or is Verisign protecting people against
> "slammers" who try to transfer names without authorization?
>
> More deeply, if it is ICANN's job to create and enforce a
> vertical separation between registrar and registry in order to
> encourage "competition" and "portability" of domain names -
> a job it aggressively assumed from its earliest days -
> then along with that goes the responsibility to define a fair,
> secure and efficient procedure for transfering names.
> Consumer protection has to be an element of that.
>
> Once ICANN has gotten into the business of defining and
> enforcing competition policy why shouldn't suppliers come to
> it and complain that certain practices are anti-competitive?
> And if suppliers can come to ICANN asking it to regulate the
> industry differently (and believe me, they do it daily)
> then why can't consumers come to it and complain about suppliers?
>
> The only problem I have with what Jamie is saying is the
> "Rip Van Winkle" element:
>
> He is assuming that no one else in NCDNHC has noticed it. In
> fact, we have been on this for some time. Some
> people are just waking up to it.
>
> --MM
>
>
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