New registry services (Jisuk, Carlos, Marc - please note)

[Harold Feld]

Milton, generally agree.  My own thoughts.

1) Registries, registrars, and users are best positioned to know what
services best serve their needs.  Furthermore, there is great concern
that pre-approval may be used by competitive rivals to delay roll out of
new services -- to the disadvantage of users.  Nor is it the role of
ICANN to preserve a particular status quo, but to focus on technical
stability.

2) In particular, registries serving smaller, well identified
communities, such as .org, .museum, or others, should be encouraged to
consult within their communities before rolling out new services and
ICANN should respect the choices of these communities.  This is
particularly true where innovations will address clearly stated user
needs, such as privacy concerns.  Generic registries should also be
encouraged to establish informal consultation processes to ensure
technical stability.  Use of these processes should be relevant in
assessing whether any after-the-fact remedy or emergency relief is
warranted.

2a) At the same time, registries as businesses may have genuine business
reasons for wanting to maintain confidentiality of information.  ICANN
should establish means by which such confidentiality can be protected,
while providing adequate opportunity for potentially effected parties to
comment and invoke remedies.

3) To the extent .com and .net pose a special case due to their existing
market share, any policy process must clearly delineate the boundaries
of such special consideration, why it is necessary, and what conditions
must be met by the .com and .net registries to alleviate the need for
such special treatment.

Milton Mueller wrote:

>We have been given an absurdly short time frame to comment
>on an ICANN staff report regarding a very complex issue: review
>of new registry services by ICANN.
>
>In very brief form, the issue (as part of the fallout of Sitefinder)
>is whether ICANN should review every attempt of registries
>to introduce new services. The GNSO has been asked to make
>a policy on this.
>
>Here is my proposed statement. Please give me your
>opinion by today. I apologize for the short time frame.
>
>=====
>
>NCUC believes that the draft "catalogue of issues"
>on new registry services prepared by ICANN staff is
>acceptable. We are concerned, however, that the
>number and complexity of the issues posed are too
>numerous for a single PDP.
>
>NCUC believes that the focus of a process be not be
>on prior review of new services, but on improving
>registry contracts to heighten technical and stability
>considerations.
>
>As a user constituency, NCUC believes that contracts
>should be strengthened to prevent registries from
>exploiting user switching costs to make technical
>changes that might affect the service users receive
>from a registry.
>
>We believe that improved contracts and after-the-fact
>challenge and review of services is preferable to a
>before-the-fact approval process, which is likely to
>be anti-competitive, anti-innovative, and bureaucratic.
>
>