Approval process for gtld service changes

[Harold Feld]

I must disagree with point four.

Milton Mueller wrote:

>
>4. The PDP should consider whether there should be a distinction between
>policies applied to sponsored and unsponsored TLDs. NCUC believes
>the answer is no: if the justification for regulation is economic; i.e,
>that users are locked in to a supplier and cannot switch service providers
>without incurring damaging costs, then the same fundamental economic
>problem applies regardless of whether the registry is sponsored or not.
>If the justification for the process is technical, the answer is the same:
>there is no relevant technical distinction between sponsored and un-
>sponsored registries.
>
Sponsored TLDs may have communities in which particular changes are more
damaging than others.  Furthermore, the collective nature of the
community surrounding a sponsored TLD lends itself better to closer
consultation with registrants.

For example, to the extent museuems have customized how they use their
domain names for particular purposes, in reliance on past practices of
the .museum registry, a registry change might well have a significant
effect on the entire community.  For larger, more diffuse registries,
such as unsponsored TLDs or sponsored TLDs with broader communities,
such as .biz, the cost of community consultation is much higher and the
vulnerability of the entire community as a whole to a change in policy
is decreased.

Harold