Public interest obligations in .net?

[Marc Schneiders]

On Tue, 1 Jun 2004, at 14:57 [=GMT-0400], Harold Feld wrote:

> a) IDNs.  It is high time ICANN got over its Verisign fixation and got
> into gear on IDNs.  The divestiture should therefore require/faciliate
> more than the promise to obey ICANN decisions on the matter, as was done
> with .org.  Rather, the entity bidding on .net should be required to
> make a specific commitment of time and resources to working with other
> TLDs to develop a working IDN system.

I am fully with you in this. Under .org re-assignment this wasn;t
fully worked out and this led to some problems (fortunately somewhat
solved early this year).

This is, however, not .net specific as you said. This is something
ICANN should settle for all gTLDs (or not? is it rather an IETF thing?
in any case ICANN should make its postion clearer. problem is that
this a bit beyond the GNSO council). I am with you though, since I was
so much annoyed by Afilias on the one hand planning to kill .org IDNs
and on the other introducing them in .info. Really. This was
happening.

> b) Cost.  Marc is right that, since we seem stuck with centrally
> controlled pricing, we should urge that the set wholesale price be
> considered as part of the application.  But what about other issues of
> purchasing domain names?  Are those in other countries at a disadvantage
> because of lack of American currency?  Or does the near universality of
> credit crads address this issue?  Is this something that can be
> addressed at the TLD level?

Personally I have problems getting money from Holland to germany
quickly. Sometimes I get into my car and drive for 90 minutes to a
German bank and deposit cash. Otherwise it takes a week. I am serious.
I have no idea what problems people encounter in countries in other parts of the world.
This is another problem than the price problem. I think $6 is highly
inflated. Not because .info now offers registrations for free (it
does), or that .biz and .us offered lower rates too recently. I do
want serious srvices from a registry and price fighting is (in itself)
not going to help. But we are here talking about a managed
cartel/monopoly. At some time NetSol was allowed to charge $50. Now
this is down to $6, since 1999. Is the $6 still realistic?
I am no expert (or even clever) to decide whether it can be lower. So,
why not let the market decide? If some company (that is otherwise
solid etc.) can do it for $4 or 3, why not? I also see no other
distinguishing difference between applicants.

> c) Privacy.  In the United States, we spend a considerable amount of
> regulatory effort on protecting the privacy of those who register phone
> numbers.  What kind of commitments can we look for, especially in light
> of the varioius WHOIS task forces?  If nothing else, a commitment to
> privacy as a normative value (even if it is ultimately evicerated by the
> intellectual property and law enforcement communities) is useful in and
> of itself.

This is at present a hot topic within ICANN, and it should be. But it
isn't .net specific.

> What concepts are currently embedded in registry agreements that
> should be dropped? For example, now that Verisign has spun off its
> registrar, can we please eliminate the restriction on communicating
> directly with registrants?  Arguably, this made sense when a registry
> controlled a registrar and could use its registry information in an
> anticompetitive fashion. But now all this requirement does is get in the
> way of potentially important communications.

The best thing would be to get rid of this silly registrar-registry
system. Wasn't Milton Mueller saying this for years? True competition
doesn't grow out of a system where some monopoly licensee has to sell
to all approved by the monopoly licenser at the same price. I know
nothing of these things, but even I get this.
Best would be if we would have registries for 50 TLDs selling domains
directly to customers. That would get us low prices and real
innovation.

But I guess it is too late for that.

Marc Schneiders
NCUC council rep