Fwd: [At-Large] Strange Bedfellows

[Adam Peake]

Milton, thanks for the answer.

Not an issue I've managed to get very excited 
about.  For a user wanting to buy a 
meaningful/useful name, well... they aren't the 
ones involved here (those are already parked.)

But I don't see the benefit argument -- If I make 
a mistake when paying for a $9 ($10, $20) item. 
Tough.  Not as if registering a name doesn't give 
you a few chances before clicking "pay".  That it 
was not part of any policy development process or 
discussion also makes it weak (a few DNSO or GNSO 
folk sitting around thinking "this would be nice, 
let's tag it on some policy process" is not good.)

I'd suggest removing the AGP because it's bad 
policy and bad policy process. But won't get very 
upset either way.

OK to forward your reply to the At Large list?

Adam


At 5:18 AM -0500 1/8/08, Milton L Mueller wrote:
>Was Evan at the ALAC-NCUC meeting where we discussed this at some
>length? Has he read our complete comments? (Can't blame him if the
>answer is no, because there are so many rounds of comments at different
>times and in different places that it would be easy to miss. Robin, can
>you dig them up?)
>
>First, I would recommend informing him that someone who disagrees with
>his particular position is not necessarily unconcerned about the public
>interest. Indeed, one reason we were unwilling to jump on the anti-AGP
>bandwagon was precisely that we saw only a few special interests for it
>and not a big public interest rationale. On the whole, the issue affects
>noncommercial registrants and the general public hardly at all.
>
>Further, his grasp of the political and economic interests seems a bit
>shaky. In our experience, it has been the registries (aside from
>VeriSign) and in particular Afilias-associated registries who were
>screaming most loudly about AGP. Some registries have complained about
>the cost of handling all the traffic associated with short-term
>registrations. This is a valid argument, but it was quickly and
>adequately addressed by imposing fees (as PIR did). If the registries
>have stopped supporting elimination of AGP, it is probably because the
>imposition of "re-stocking fees" addresses the infrastructure burden
>problem more than adequately.
>
>He should not be surprised about the Business constituency position,
>because they are all about regulating the domain name market as strongly
>as possible to protect trademarks. Many businesses see domainers as
>contributing to typosquatting. So they are more than happy to eliminate
>business opportunities for small speculators, regardless of whether
>there are other ways to eliminate typosquatting (there are), just as
>they would be more than happy to eliminate all new TLDs in order to
>protect trademarks. 
>
>The "possible" benefit of ADP to registrants is the one that originally
>motivated creating it: providing a cost-free way to correct mistakes.
>
>Our take on this issue is that the attack on AGP is basically an attack
>on domainers; i.e., on making a business out of pay per click based on
>popular domain names. We don't view domaining per se as a problem. As
>I've said (and this may be not shared by some on the list) we are the
>non-commercial constituency not the "anti-commercial" constituency. If
>the problems of typosquatting are addressed by litigation (and they have
>been) and the problems of registry infrastructure burden are addressed
>by the fees, we just don't see the point of eliminating AGP altogether,
>what does it accomplish that serves the public interest?