Approval process for gtld service changes

[Marc Schneiders]

On Mon, 12 Jan 2004, at 16:04 [=GMT-0500], Milton Mueller wrote:

> Marc
> Thanks for the comments, they are good at getting
> some important discussion going. Below I respond to only
> one aspect of your comments; other messages will respond
> to other aspects.
>
> >>> Marc Schneiders <marc at schneiders.org> 01/11/04 08:55AM >>>
> >>We are also
> >> not convinced of [ICANN's] ability to engage in competition policy-related
> >> forms of regulation.
>
> >I am not that convinced either. But I do not see how national
> >regulatory authorities can take care of consumer protection. How can a
> >Dutch registrant handle an issue with a registry located in the US?
>
> Marc, have you ever flown a US airline? A Japanese one?
> If so, how are you as a consumer protected? I myself have flown on
> Chinese, Japanes, Swiss, French and German airlines all the time.
> Where is the air-ICANN to regulate them?

These airlines have agreements with countries, Milton. Verisign has
not.

> >Dutch bodies will not be able to help him. So he has to find one in
> >the US that helps him? If so, this brings up the topic of the US
> >centredness of ICANN again. This is a problem we need to acknowledge
> >in this context.
>
> The US-centric issue is mostly a red herring in this context.
> The US Dept of Commerce's residual contractual power over
> ICANN has almost nothing to do with consumer protection issues.

The point is whether it should...

> >Plainly: We may not like ICANN getting more power. But who else is
> >going to protect us against cases like PIR deleting IDN domain names
> >without even so much as telling the registrants? To me this looks like
> >a jungle. And if I want to do something about it, I have to hire a US
> >lawyer. I think this is just bad.
>
> Some aspects of your comments are typical of the regulatory
> naivete that characterizes the ICANN community.
>
> First, a very specific issue: I will bet you money that PIR deleted
> those IDN names because that is what ICANN wants it to do.
> Or because that is what it _thinks_ ICANN wants it to do.
> If you think ICANN is going to reverse those decisions you are
> 100% wrong. ICANN wants to control the standard for IDN
> implementation, allegedly for technical stability reasons. In order
> to do that it must wipe out unauthorized implementations.

Whatever the reason, what I mind most, is that they do this secretly.
Asking ICANN makes no sense, since it will hide behind 'we did not
authorize this anyway'.

> Second, and more important, a general principle. Giving ICANN
> additional powers and telling it to use it to "protect the public
> interest" does not by itself protect the public interest. ICANN
> must be made _accountable_ to the relevant public, and the incentives
> of its staff and Board must be realigned so that ICANN is compelled
> to pursue something closer to the public interest than not.

Which is wjy I got consultation of the public in this PDP's terms of
reference.

> The naive view, which I see a lot among techies, is something
> like this: I have a problem with [a supplier]. I want someone
> to solve that problem for me. I don't want to have to spend
> any of my own money (i.e., hire a lawyer).

Too simple. We are here talking about small amounts of money in an
international context. Not mega bllion deals. There should be a low
threshold. Hiring a US lawyer is no a low threshold for people outside
of the US.

> So I conclude that someone,
> anyone, should look over the shoulder of that supplier and have the
> power to force it to do things. That will make me better off than before.

No. I conclude that suppliers get away with a lot, much more than they
would in my own country. I then wonder why. And I can think of two
possible conclusions:

1. US law does not protect customers in an efficient way
2. The way things are, with ICANN in the middle, customers are even
less protected, because registries can hide behind their contracts
with ICANN, and ICANN does not do cinsumer protection.

> Obviously when I state the assumption that baldly it is
> not so convincing, is it? But that is basically what you are
> saying.

I don't think so.

> This is what I call the "God" theory of regulation. The regulator
> is assumed to know everything about everything, and to have
> the purest of motives, and so will only the intervene in ways that
> help the public.
>
> If solving regulatory problems were that easy,
> the world would be a wonderful place.

I am all for no regulation. But once we have to have it, the regulator
should take some responsibility for what its 'accredited' licensees
are doing.

> You note yourself that the ICANN-registry contracts do
> not protect the public that much. Why is that? Why is
> it that ICANN has so far done so much to protect
> trademark rights and almost nothign to protect individual
> registrants? Do you think that is an accident? Do you think
> that will be changed without fundamentally changing
> who is represented within ICANN and how its decisions
> are made?

Perhaps not. So I am weary about the whole thing. But this does not
mean we should give up the whole idea and leave it to the TM people,
does it? The government is not that good at protecting small people
either is it? Should we not tell it that every day but just let it
happen? Perhaps you think we should have a less government as
possible? If so: do you really think that, or do you mean just as much
government sufficient to protect your interests?

>
> --MM
>
>
>