FYI, from one of a few on the domain investor business side who impress me as a sober, evidence-persuaded commentator, my friend Antony gave me permission to share this private note.

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Antony Van Couvering <avc@avc.vc>
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2018, 7:41 pm
Subject: Re: [At-Large] For Sale - Entire names spaces.
To: Carlton Samuels <carlton.samuels@gmail.com>

Hi Carlton,

So many expectations about new gTLDs have been proven wrong -- those of both proponents and opponents -- that some of the commitments made at launch are out of date or uneconomical or both. Effectively you have a bunch of TLDs that no-one wants because the applicants were so eager to appease trademark holders, or GAC, or ICANN, or local governments, that they agreed to all kinds of things they shouldn't have from an economic perspective. This is particularly true of those who sought to evade competition by filing as a community, or those who wouldn't / couldn't argue with restrictions imposed by city governments.

You can argue whether that's good or bad, but there's certainly an economic cost to the gTLD registries who did that, both in terms of registration volume but also in resale value. Sponsoring organizations and governments who are getting a revenue share might also regret having imposed conditions, but I'm not sure there's a way out for "community" applications, because they won based on those very restrictions.

If ICANN's guidebook for the next round is as opaque as the first one, and if the various outside committees/consultants examining the applications are as arbitrary and weird in their results, the same effect will occur again: applicants won't know if they're going to pass or not, so they will restrict themselves needlessly in order to get half a loaf instead of nothing at all.

Antony

On 10/24/2018 5:23 PM, Carlton Samuels wrote:

Hi Anthony:

I share your view on this. My line was really a teaser to hopefully bring out contrary opinions I've heard.

A few of our brethren have argued that if the original conditionals were elements for the reduced valuation then maybe the full value could not be realized without shedding them.

Cheers,

-Carlton

==============================
Carlton A Samuels
Mobile: 876-818-1799
Strategy, Process, Governance, Assessment & Turnaround
=============================
On Wed, Oct 24, 2018 at 1:12 PM Antony Van Couvering <avc@avc.vc> wrote:
Hi Carlton,

I'm pretty certain that the buyer would have to embrace all of the commitments. Otherwise, It would be pretty easy to evade restrictions, particularly those of "community" TLDs that restrict the sale or use of second-level names. If that were allowed, you could simply sell it to another party (that you happened to control) to escape the original commitments. In my experience ICANN is very punctilious when it comes to registry commitments

One proof of this is that TLDs are valued at a lower (or higher) price depending on what their commitments are, because prospective buyers don't want a TLD that has restrictions that don't fit their business model or vision.

Antony

On 10/24/2018 10:48 AM, Carlton Samuels wrote:
What would be interesting is if conveyancing embraces every and all of the original commitments.

https://domainnamewire.com/2018/10/24/we-buy-tlds/

CAS

==============================
Carlton A Samuels
Mobile: 876-818-1799
Strategy, Process, Governance, Assessment & Turnaround
=============================
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