ICANN Announcement on Domain Tasting
Please see the announcement and report (<http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-12aug09-en.htm>http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-12aug09-en.htm) ICANN posted today about the impact of the AGP Budget Provision and the AGP Limits Policy on Domain Tasting. In short, the changes are dramatic. There were 17,668750 AGP deletes in June 2008. Following the ICANN budget levy on excessive deletes, the number decreased to 2,785,605. With the implementation of the AGP limit policy in April 2009, the total number of AGP deletes was 58,218, an overall decrease of 99.7%. Put another way, in June 2008, for .COM, there were 2,122,794 net new domains added, and an additional 15,738,292 domain names added and then AGP-deleted for an AGP delete rate of 741% In April 2009, there were 2,084,868 net new domains added, and an additional 37,519 domain names added and then AGP-deleted for an AGP delete rate of under 2%. Under the policy, an AGP-delete rate of 10% is allowed without financial penalty, per registrar, to allow for exceptional conditions. It was expected that few registrars would exceed this 10% and in fact in April only 22 registrars exceeded 10%, and there were only 432 excessive AGP-deletes. As the organization that started this entire policy process, At-Large and ALAC can be proud of the results. Alan
On 08/12/2009 01:21 PM, Alan Greenberg wrote:
As the organization that started this entire policy process, At-Large and ALAC can be proud of the results.
I'm not so sure about that. The main problem with the massive add-grace stuff was not the churn but the fact that it was a transfer of costs from the "domainers", who were getting a free ride, onto the backs of the domain name buying public who were paying for the transaction costs and the lost opportunity costs due to the 5 day name lock-up. When you or I acquire a .com name for a year we each have to pay a registry fee of about $7 to cover the purported costs that the registry incurs in order to handle our transaction and publish the name into the zone and operate the zone servers. We pay that fee even if we relinquish the name in a week. That would suggest that in June 2008, where there were 15,738,292 AGP names, that the .com registry was bearing a cost (at that pegged $7 registry fee) of $110,168,044/month - or about $1,322,016,528/year. There are two conclusions: Either the .com registry has now saved over 1.3 billion $US that we were previously paying and which it is now retaining as profit. Or the registry fee is pegged by ICANN at a hyper inflated level. Either way, we the community of internet users are a Boston fish - we are scrod. The point of this little exercise is to show that ICANN's fiat registry fees, based on thing more than hot air emitted by the registries and accompanied by no audit of actual registry costs, is costing domain name users a very large pile of money every year. It is long past time that ICANN be required to perform a believable, public, and deep audit of registry costs and to adjust the registry fee component of domain name prices to be in conformance with those costs. --karl--
Karl, I see your maths in a different way. Your approach is kind of Madoff, inventing pyramidal money. This pyramidal bubble (Madoff-like value 1.3 billion $US per year) was a cost of AGP put on Verisign, which registry had to face all that pollution and increase its servers capabilities. I am happy Verisign could cope with that nonsense, and even happier that AGP policy was changed, thanks to all. Money does not arrive from nowhere, bubble is not sane. I do not know if $7 per domain is expensive or not, but I am quite sure the registry must have resources to cope with pollution like AGP. Kind regards, Elisabeth Porteneuve ----- Original Message ----- From: "Karl Auerbach" <karl@cavebear.com> To: "At-Large Worldwide" <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Cc: "ALAC Working List" <alac@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2009 10:58 PM Subject: Re: [At-Large] ICANN Announcement on Domain Tasting
On 08/12/2009 01:21 PM, Alan Greenberg wrote:
As the organization that started this entire policy process, At-Large and ALAC can be proud of the results.
I'm not so sure about that.
The main problem with the massive add-grace stuff was not the churn but the fact that it was a transfer of costs from the "domainers", who were getting a free ride, onto the backs of the domain name buying public who were paying for the transaction costs and the lost opportunity costs due to the 5 day name lock-up.
When you or I acquire a .com name for a year we each have to pay a registry fee of about $7 to cover the purported costs that the registry incurs in order to handle our transaction and publish the name into the zone and operate the zone servers. We pay that fee even if we relinquish the name in a week.
That would suggest that in June 2008, where there were 15,738,292 AGP names, that the .com registry was bearing a cost (at that pegged $7 registry fee) of $110,168,044/month - or about $1,322,016,528/year.
There are two conclusions:
Either the .com registry has now saved over 1.3 billion $US that we were previously paying and which it is now retaining as profit.
Or the registry fee is pegged by ICANN at a hyper inflated level.
Either way, we the community of internet users are a Boston fish - we are scrod.
The point of this little exercise is to show that ICANN's fiat registry fees, based on thing more than hot air emitted by the registries and accompanied by no audit of actual registry costs, is costing domain name users a very large pile of money every year.
It is long past time that ICANN be required to perform a believable, public, and deep audit of registry costs and to adjust the registry fee component of domain name prices to be in conformance with those costs.
--karl--
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Karl, And you know that domain tasting was done with complacent registrars where "no money" was exchanged... Some people are just never happy. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Elisabeth Porteneuve" <elisabeth.porteneuve@cetp.ipsl.fr> To: "At-Large Worldwide" <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org>, "Karl Auerbach" <karl@CaveBear.com> Cc: "ALAC Working List" <alac@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Sent: Thursday, 13 August, 2009 9:48:55 AM GMT +12:00 Fiji Subject: Re: [At-Large] ICANN Announcement on Domain Tasting Karl, I see your maths in a different way. Your approach is kind of Madoff, inventing pyramidal money. This pyramidal bubble (Madoff-like value 1.3 billion $US per year) was a cost of AGP put on Verisign, which registry had to face all that pollution and increase its servers capabilities. I am happy Verisign could cope with that nonsense, and even happier that AGP policy was changed, thanks to all. Money does not arrive from nowhere, bubble is not sane. I do not know if $7 per domain is expensive or not, but I am quite sure the registry must have resources to cope with pollution like AGP. Kind regards, Elisabeth Porteneuve ----- Original Message ----- From: "Karl Auerbach" <karl@cavebear.com> To: "At-Large Worldwide" <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Cc: "ALAC Working List" <alac@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2009 10:58 PM Subject: Re: [At-Large] ICANN Announcement on Domain Tasting
On 08/12/2009 01:21 PM, Alan Greenberg wrote:
As the organization that started this entire policy process, At-Large and ALAC can be proud of the results.
I'm not so sure about that.
The main problem with the massive add-grace stuff was not the churn but the fact that it was a transfer of costs from the "domainers", who were getting a free ride, onto the backs of the domain name buying public who were paying for the transaction costs and the lost opportunity costs due to the 5 day name lock-up.
When you or I acquire a .com name for a year we each have to pay a registry fee of about $7 to cover the purported costs that the registry incurs in order to handle our transaction and publish the name into the zone and operate the zone servers. We pay that fee even if we relinquish the name in a week.
That would suggest that in June 2008, where there were 15,738,292 AGP names, that the .com registry was bearing a cost (at that pegged $7 registry fee) of $110,168,044/month - or about $1,322,016,528/year.
There are two conclusions:
Either the .com registry has now saved over 1.3 billion $US that we were previously paying and which it is now retaining as profit.
Or the registry fee is pegged by ICANN at a hyper inflated level.
Either way, we the community of internet users are a Boston fish - we are scrod.
The point of this little exercise is to show that ICANN's fiat registry fees, based on thing more than hot air emitted by the registries and accompanied by no audit of actual registry costs, is costing domain name users a very large pile of money every year.
It is long past time that ICANN be required to perform a believable, public, and deep audit of registry costs and to adjust the registry fee component of domain name prices to be in conformance with those costs.
--karl--
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On 08/12/2009 02:59 PM, Franck Martin wrote:
Karl,
And you know that domain tasting was done with complacent registrars where "no money" was exchanged...
That's the point - we are charged $7 per transaction while others got it for free, i.e. we were subsidizing those others. Had those subsidized transactions cost much then we would have heard complaints from registrars whining how AGP was costing them too much. (It is ironic that that kind of whining from Verisign's predecessor, Network Solutions, was the reason why the US National Science Foundation [NSF] allowed the initiation of domain name fees.) But the registries did not whine, thus suggesting that the actual cost of registrations was actually so far below the $7 we pay that adding a few hundred million extra registrations - each with a corresponding roll-back transaction - every year didn't really cost very much. In other words, the silence is yet more evidence that ICANN's fiat registry fee is a made of nothing more substantial than hot air. The point of this, as implied by Elisabeth P. is that there is a lot of fantasy "accounting" going on inside the explicit and implicit cash flows and subsidies under the ICANN blanket. It is long past time that ICANN, which is supposed to operate to protect the public interest, pulled aside that blanket to let us see where the money is going and how much of what we are paying is for real registry services and how much is invested in marketing-image Potemkin Village build-outs (such as Verisign's Fort Knox-like sites for its servers) and how much simply ends up going out as registry pay-outs in the form of inflated salaries/bonuses/benefits, or being accumulated as retained earnings, etc. Estimates of what the real registry costs for .com names range from $0.03 to $3 (USD) per name per year. In other words, even the highest estimate suggests that ICANN is gifting unto Verisign and other registries several hundred million of our dollars every year. Is it so hard to require that ICANN make a deep accounting of registry costs and publish the results? That kind of thing is an entirely routine practice by other regulatory bodies. (The publication part is important - members of the public who are skeptical need to be able run the numbers past their own accountants.) --karl--
Either the .com registry has now saved over 1.3 billion $US that we were previously paying and which it is now retaining as profit.
Or the registry fee is pegged by ICANN at a hyper inflated level.
I don't believe that Verisign has ever offered a cost justification for their registry fees. Considering that .COM and .NET use the exact same infrastructure, it'd take some pretty creative cost accounting to justify $6.86 for .COM and $4.98 for .NET. At the time the board approved the settlement that gave Verisign eternal renewals and price increases, board members told me they wanted stability, and showed no interest in whether the price was related to costs. Considering that roughly the same board seems to have no problem with the CFO speculating in the stock market with the corporation's reserve funds, with a well documented loss of over $4M, it doesn't seem realistic to expect them to exert meaningful financial oversight over anything. That's why they were doing you a favor when they didn't let you see those tedious and confusing financial statements. R's, John See http://weblog.johnlevine.com/ICANN/vrsncom.html
I see there are two different issues here, one is that of AGP and the other is of justification of registration fee/cost. Though they are indirectly inter-related, I see reducing the domain name tasting is a good step forward and ALAC and Atlarge community should get credit for that. When we started to bring this issue, by asking staff report to initiate GNSO policy development process, many registry and registrars were not so supportive. Some said we should not constrain the creative business or innovation, and others said nothing is illegal. Of course, that does not mean we should stop there and ignore the cost and pricing issue of monopolisctic registry. Let's move on if so needed. izumi 2009/8/13 John R. Levine <johnl@iecc.com>:
Either the .com registry has now saved over 1.3 billion $US that we were previously paying and which it is now retaining as profit.
Or the registry fee is pegged by ICANN at a hyper inflated level.
I don't believe that Verisign has ever offered a cost justification for their registry fees. Considering that .COM and .NET use the exact same infrastructure, it'd take some pretty creative cost accounting to justify $6.86 for .COM and $4.98 for .NET.
At the time the board approved the settlement that gave Verisign eternal renewals and price increases, board members told me they wanted stability, and showed no interest in whether the price was related to costs.
Considering that roughly the same board seems to have no problem with the CFO speculating in the stock market with the corporation's reserve funds, with a well documented loss of over $4M, it doesn't seem realistic to expect them to exert meaningful financial oversight over anything. That's why they were doing you a favor when they didn't let you see those tedious and confusing financial statements.
R's, John
See http://weblog.johnlevine.com/ICANN/vrsncom.html
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-- >> Izumi Aizu << Institute for InfoSocionomics, Tama University, Tokyo Institute for HyperNetwork Society, Oita, Japan * * * * * << Writing the Future of the History >> www.anr.org
On Wed, 12 Aug 2009 19:49:33 -0400 (EDT), "John R. Levine" <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:
Either the .com registry has now saved over 1.3 billion $US that we were
previously paying and which it is now retaining as profit.
Or the registry fee is pegged by ICANN at a hyper inflated level.
I don't believe that Verisign has ever offered a cost justification for their registry fees. Considering that .COM and .NET use the exact same infrastructure, it'd take some pretty creative cost accounting to justify
$6.86 for .COM and $4.98 for .NET.
Allow me to be the devil's advocate here. In a capitalist environment, market prices are based on supply and demand. As long as customers are willing to pay the price being asked, there is no reason why VRSN would lower its prices. That is what a VRSN shareholder expects the company to do. If there was ever a trend that .com registrations would decrease because of the price, VRSN would adapt its strategy. The bottom line is that if you are unhappy with the price you pay, vote with your feet and get a cheaper domain name. It's a free market. There is competition. Patrick -- Blog: http://patrick.vande-walle.eu Twitter: http://twitter.vande-walle.eu Identica: http://identica.vande-walle.eu
On 08/12/2009 11:39 PM, Patrick Vande Walle wrote:
$6.86 for .COM and $4.98 for .NET.
Allow me to be the devil's advocate here.
In a capitalist environment, market prices are based on supply and demand. As long as customers are willing to pay the price being asked, there is no reason why VRSN would lower its prices. That is what a VRSN shareholder expects the company to do.
I have long held a position similar to the one you suggest - that registries can charge what the market will bear - but only on certain limited conditions: - That such rates not be imposed on those already locked in and only be imposed on those who are coming anew into the TLD. - That customers be able to lock-in their initial terms for very long periods of time, i.e. have a right to renew at the lesser of the current contract fee schedule or the rate being offered to new customers. I would suggest that we examine your premise, i.e. of a free marketplace in which customers have a choice. You are assuming that TLDs are fungible - that .com and .biz are equivalent in the eyes of our customers - and that the costs of making a change are negligible. Yet neither is true. TLDs are not fungible. In the eyes of many consumers, companies (particularly ones, such as mine with three-letter names) in .com are perceived as having more substance than those in TLDs such as .biz or .bz. So for us to move out of .com would mean a reduction in our perceived business reputation. Changing TLDs is not something for the feint of heart - for many businesses it would be effective suicide. In my case changing to a new TLD would require me to abandon all of the recognition - including all of the search engine material and all of the URL's that currently point to me. As a US appellate court recently found, the space within a TLD is not a marketplace subject to competitive pressures. Customers are locked in. Absent an enormous burden neither IBM nor Cavebear (or AT&T or Microsoft or Google or ... the list goes on and on) is going to leave .com - we have all built internet presence and reputation and the loss of accumulated "goodwill" and the cost of changing far exceeds the fiat registry fee. In other words, voting with our feet is not a realistic answer for those millions upon millions of people who are already made their TLD choice. The name of the most commonly used DNS software is "BIND" - and that reflects what happens at the instant one selects a TLD and begins to build an internet presence: One becomes bound to that TLD and change becomes increasingly expensive. Suppose your state's utility commission should say that you now are required to pay $50/month surcharge - would your answer be that you can vote with your feet and live off the electrical grid? Or suppose you are sitting on a ship half way to Hawaii and the captain comes on and says "We are pleased to announce that all passengers are now subject to a $1000 docking fee." You could vote with your feet and jump off and swim 2000km to shore. Few people would take that option. And few would consider that they had a realistic choice. The simple fact is that while there is a valid argument that *before* a consumer chooses a TLD there is a competitive situation. But once the choice is made the consumer is stuck. I know for a fact that I have never had a choice about the registry component of the price for my names in .com - the registry fee component was simply dictated by ICANN unto me and I had a blunt choice: pay or abandon my names in .com. --karl--
Karl, On domain market pricing. The market of Times 1000 companies could bear £1m plus pricing The market of shoe shiners in Boston hotels probably balk at paying $5 or $10 and prefer to be found as you walk past. The market for the millions in developing country shanty town probably falls far far below this. By your own analysis (the value to you of a domain becomes higher over time) the bearable price for those with longterm usage of a domain is going to be much higher than those who are new registrants. If you except one class (long term registrants) from market pricing why not others? Do they not all need protection? Policy that has the impact of favouring incumbents and prejudicing new entrants is, well, prejudiced. As an aside I would also observe that if you are a Times 1000 company you might view .com today as a shabby down at heel zone and would prefer either to have your own TLD which at $500,000 or under is pretty cheap for you and or join a community of business users under an exclusive prestige community TLD restricted to just the favoured few. Why share your branding with all sorts when you can dump them and move on? The migration cost is easily managed by keeping your old .com but over a few years build links exclusively to your shiny new prestige address and before long the commercial value you inadvertently invested in the .com will have dissipated. Of course if you are not in a financial position to buy in to such high cost domains then that is 'market forces'. I would hope this analysis would suggest that ICANN needs to limit its interest to the technical issues of cost plus pricing to guide and fund technical robust policies for registry operations whilst market pricing for domains must fall within a competition jurisdiction in the resident territory of the registry concerned subject to any relevant international treaty. So speculatively if you have a gtld called .beijing with registry resident in China then the regulation of market pricing for that zone is a matter for the Chinese authorities potentially subject to WTO obligations, but not ICANN. best wishes Christian Christian de Larrinaga On 13 Aug 2009, at 11:31, Karl Auerbach wrote:
On 08/12/2009 11:39 PM, Patrick Vande Walle wrote:
$6.86 for .COM and $4.98 for .NET.
Allow me to be the devil's advocate here.
In a capitalist environment, market prices are based on supply and demand. As long as customers are willing to pay the price being asked, there is no reason why VRSN would lower its prices. That is what a VRSN shareholder expects the company to do.
I have long held a position similar to the one you suggest - that registries can charge what the market will bear - but only on certain limited conditions:
- That such rates not be imposed on those already locked in and only be imposed on those who are coming anew into the TLD.
- That customers be able to lock-in their initial terms for very long periods of time, i.e. have a right to renew at the lesser of the current contract fee schedule or the rate being offered to new customers.
I would suggest that we examine your premise, i.e. of a free marketplace in which customers have a choice.
You are assuming that TLDs are fungible - that .com and .biz are equivalent in the eyes of our customers - and that the costs of making a change are negligible.
Yet neither is true.
TLDs are not fungible. In the eyes of many consumers, companies (particularly ones, such as mine with three-letter names) in .com are perceived as having more substance than those in TLDs such as .biz or .bz. So for us to move out of .com would mean a reduction in our perceived business reputation.
Changing TLDs is not something for the feint of heart - for many businesses it would be effective suicide. In my case changing to a new TLD would require me to abandon all of the recognition - including all of the search engine material and all of the URL's that currently point to me.
As a US appellate court recently found, the space within a TLD is not a marketplace subject to competitive pressures. Customers are locked in. Absent an enormous burden neither IBM nor Cavebear (or AT&T or Microsoft or Google or ... the list goes on and on) is going to leave .com - we have all built internet presence and reputation and the loss of accumulated "goodwill" and the cost of changing far exceeds the fiat registry fee.
In other words, voting with our feet is not a realistic answer for those millions upon millions of people who are already made their TLD choice.
The name of the most commonly used DNS software is "BIND" - and that reflects what happens at the instant one selects a TLD and begins to build an internet presence: One becomes bound to that TLD and change becomes increasingly expensive.
Suppose your state's utility commission should say that you now are required to pay $50/month surcharge - would your answer be that you can vote with your feet and live off the electrical grid? Or suppose you are sitting on a ship half way to Hawaii and the captain comes on and says "We are pleased to announce that all passengers are now subject to a $1000 docking fee." You could vote with your feet and jump off and swim 2000km to shore. Few people would take that option. And few would consider that they had a realistic choice.
The simple fact is that while there is a valid argument that *before* a consumer chooses a TLD there is a competitive situation. But once the choice is made the consumer is stuck.
I know for a fact that I have never had a choice about the registry component of the price for my names in .com - the registry fee component was simply dictated by ICANN unto me and I had a blunt choice: pay or abandon my names in .com.
--karl--
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vote with your feet and get a cheaper domain name.
Someone is selling .com cheaper than Verisign? Awesome. Sign me up.
Sure, I sell them for 50 cents/year. There's a minor technical DNS tweak you have to make to change the addresses of the root servers, but that's good value in return for saving over $6/year! R's, John
Personally, I would not focus on the price as the main criterion for evaluating the success of the elimination of domain tasting. I think that the most important effect on consumers was the unavailability of names, that were used instead for different purposes. I agree with Alan, that ALAC can be proud of the fact that it demonstrated that it can indeed play a significant role. Incidentally, the ability of ALAC to play a significant role is one of the considerations on the table in the debate that is going on right now about having one or more Directors, elected by At-Large or ALAC, with voting rights. Cheers, Roberto Disclaimer: I know that Karl and myself have different views on the matter
-----Original Message----- From: at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org [mailto:at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] On Behalf Of Karl Auerbach Sent: Wednesday, 12 August 2009 22:59 To: At-Large Worldwide Cc: ALAC Working List Subject: Re: [At-Large] ICANN Announcement on Domain Tasting
On 08/12/2009 01:21 PM, Alan Greenberg wrote:
As the organization that started this entire policy process, At-Large and ALAC can be proud of the results.
I'm not so sure about that.
The main problem with the massive add-grace stuff was not the churn but the fact that it was a transfer of costs from the "domainers", who were getting a free ride, onto the backs of the domain name buying public who were paying for the transaction costs and the lost opportunity costs due to the 5 day name lock-up.
When you or I acquire a .com name for a year we each have to pay a registry fee of about $7 to cover the purported costs that the registry incurs in order to handle our transaction and publish the name into the zone and operate the zone servers. We pay that fee even if we relinquish the name in a week.
That would suggest that in June 2008, where there were 15,738,292 AGP names, that the .com registry was bearing a cost (at that pegged $7 registry fee) of $110,168,044/month - or about $1,322,016,528/year.
There are two conclusions:
Either the .com registry has now saved over 1.3 billion $US that we were previously paying and which it is now retaining as profit.
Or the registry fee is pegged by ICANN at a hyper inflated level.
Either way, we the community of internet users are a Boston fish - we are scrod.
The point of this little exercise is to show that ICANN's fiat registry fees, based on thing more than hot air emitted by the registries and accompanied by no audit of actual registry costs, is costing domain name users a very large pile of money every year.
It is long past time that ICANN be required to perform a believable, public, and deep audit of registry costs and to adjust the registry fee component of domain name prices to be in conformance with those costs.
--karl--
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Hi, ALAC asked for an issues report on domain name tasting in 2006. This is the first step in the policy development process. ALAC can take credit for this. I offer Wendy's original teleconf notes (wiki has been changed though) and a subsequent note after Marrakech's public forum presentation, which Annette gave. I remember she and I put the powerpoint together. It was historic! I wonder if I still have it! Delivered-To: pollyl-netmom:com-mom@netmom.com X-Virus-Check-By: mailwash32.pair.com Date: Sun, 07 May 2006 17:26:26 -0400 To: alac@icann.org From: Wendy Seltzer <wendy@seltzer.com> Subject: [alac] Some proposed working groups I put the notes I took of action items from our teleconference onto the ICANNwiki at <http://www.icannwiki.org/ALAC_Teleconference_May_5>, to which I see someone has already made some additions. Since we clearly cannot get all of our work done through once-monthly teleconferences, especially when the teleconference facilities are so awful, I reiterate that we should do more through sub-committee working groups (formal or informal). Here would be my suggestions (some already formed): Budget (John, Jacqueline, Annette) Website/communications (Jean, Izumi, Sebastian (I think)) Research (Wendy, Bret, Alice, Annette) Outreach Meetings (i.e., scheduling and organization for the ICANN meetings) ALS/RALOs Topic-oriented: These can be more fluid, coming into existence when we want to learn more about a particular topic or to provide advice to the Board. IDN New gTLD "existing contracts" Privacy (Wendy, ...) "Domain Tasting" and other end-user issues with domain name registration and use Trademark and other restrictions on domain registration RALO workshop in Marrakech (Jacqueline, Vittorio, Wendy, Annette) --Wendy -- Wendy Seltzer -- wendy@seltzer.com Visiting Assistant Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/seltzer.html Chilling Effects: http://www.chillingeffects.org From: "Bret Fausett" <bfausett@internet.law.pro> To: "'Bruce Tonkin'" <Bruce.Tonkin@melbourneit.com.au>, "'Council GNSO'" <council@gnso.icann.org> Cc: <annette.muehlberg@web.de>, <alac@icann.org> Subject: [alac] RE: [council] Request for issues report from ALAC Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 13:44:39 -0700 Yes, Bruce. The ALAC will send a formal request on this. You should receive it in the next day or so. We will transmit to Staff and the Board as well. Bret
-----Original Message----- From: owner-council@gnso.icann.org [mailto:owner-council@gnso.icann.org] On Behalf Of Bruce Tonkin Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 3:19 AM To: Council GNSO Cc: annette.muehlberg@web.de Subject: [council] Request for issues report from ALAC
Hello All,
I have just heard the ALAC presentation in the public forum.
There was mention of a request to produce an issues report on domain name tasting.
For reference, please note from the Policy Development process in Annex A: GNSO Policy-Development Process
http://www.icann.org/general/bylaws.htm#AnnexA
1. Raising an Issue
An issue may be raised for consideration as part of the PDP by any of the following:
c. Advisory Committee Initiation. An Advisory Committee may raise an issue for policy development by action of such committee to commence the PDP, and transmission of that request to the GNSO Council.
I assume if ALAC wants an issues report on this topic that they will formally transmit a request to the GNSO Council.
Regards, Bruce Tonkin Chair, GNSO Council
-- Jean Armour Polly http://www.netmom.com/ ex- Interim ALAC member North America
I find it fascinating -- and disturbing -- that one of our longest discussion threads of recent memory is not about policy, or even process, but assigning credit. If only we could have something even half as engaging regarding the most pressing current issue (IMO) which is proposing an alternative to the massive excesses of the IRT report. Without an alternative in hand, that piece of crap is the only approach to trademarks that ICANN senior staff and Board have in their hands. If that doesn't interest you, please find something else that does. There are certainly enough going on right now: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=rJKtp8gl3W5-ZcY_xMpPg5w Pick a working group and get involved, wake it up if you have to. ALAC has an acute shortage of people stepping forward to help on policy. We have an otherwise-needless Executive Committee formed merely because there are so many vacuums to fill, which means the same small core of people are being called upon to to most of the work. And then people complain about inclusiveness... Please -- those of you who have so keenly debated who deserves the honours for past actions -- consider that we have many more such potential actions ahead. Let's not make domain tasting the ONLY policy achievement we of which should be proud. - Evan
Well said! Since I have been accused of trolling, fear mongering etc I will not post this openly. I strongly believe their should be some form of consumer protection at registry level, exactly the excuse used by the IRT crowd to justify why brands should be protected. Right now I can pull up a list of "bnk" names - yes banks, all spoofing banks. That said, it does not stop there. There may or may not be a trademark involved, yet the same party may indiscriminately spoof real institutions (and mark) or create totally fictitious banks or companies for various types of fraud. Proven is that the whois is bogus, steals id's of real people (sometimes even their credit card details and funds :( ), yet all linked to the same emails. If we were to say that after 200 domains, all fraudulent, party X will most likely not be publishing an informational site with alifaxbnk.com, we would have something. Or as the case is currently and by no means unique, "UK hoster" (actually Nigerian) Agamahost.com selling domains, SSL certificates etc complete with websites to his friends back home for 419 purposes... : https://www.bdl-es.com/ibank/TLEU/tleu/jsp/uk/ing/home/index14c6.html?rf= https://www.albbplconline.com/ (hidden in there somewhere) https://www.nyfbonline.org/ https://www.fcbplcuk.com/ibank/secure/myaccount/disclaimer/asp/LogonFrame259... plus, plus, plus many more .... This requires a consolidated approach by all registrars, maybe registries even? Right now "trust" is being sold down the drain at a rapid rate. Being in IT for close to 30 year I am short of neurotic of all things registrar and internet related, 100 times more knowledgeable than the average user in things internet related. Yet even I cannot say anymore what is sometimes real and what not. What chance has the average consumer have? Yet while Rome is burning people are trying to attribute credit? My 5c worth. Derek Smythe Evan Leibovitch wrote:
I find it fascinating -- and disturbing -- that one of our longest discussion threads of recent memory is not about policy, or even process, but assigning credit.
If only we could have something even half as engaging regarding the most pressing current issue (IMO) which is proposing an alternative to the massive excesses of the IRT report. Without an alternative in hand, that piece of crap is the only approach to trademarks that ICANN senior staff and Board have in their hands.
If that doesn't interest you, please find something else that does. There are certainly enough going on right now: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=rJKtp8gl3W5-ZcY_xMpPg5w Pick a working group and get involved, wake it up if you have to.
ALAC has an acute shortage of people stepping forward to help on policy. We have an otherwise-needless Executive Committee formed merely because there are so many vacuums to fill, which means the same small core of people are being called upon to to most of the work. And then people complain about inclusiveness...
Please -- those of you who have so keenly debated who deserves the honours for past actions -- consider that we have many more such potential actions ahead. Let's not make domain tasting the ONLY policy achievement we of which should be proud.
- Evan
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Correction: "I will not post this openly." should be "I would not normally post this openly." Aplogies Derek Derek Smythe wrote:
Well said!
Since I have been accused of trolling, fear mongering etc I will not post this openly.
I strongly believe their should be some form of consumer protection at registry level, exactly the excuse used by the IRT crowd to justify why brands should be protected.
Right now I can pull up a list of "bnk" names - yes banks, all spoofing banks.
That said, it does not stop there. There may or may not be a trademark involved, yet the same party may indiscriminately spoof real institutions (and mark) or create totally fictitious banks or companies for various types of fraud.
Proven is that the whois is bogus, steals id's of real people (sometimes even their credit card details and funds :( ), yet all linked to the same emails.
If we were to say that after 200 domains, all fraudulent, party X will most likely not be publishing an informational site with alifaxbnk.com, we would have something.
Or as the case is currently and by no means unique, "UK hoster" (actually Nigerian) Agamahost.com selling domains, SSL certificates etc complete with websites to his friends back home for 419 purposes... :
https://www.bdl-es.com/ibank/TLEU/tleu/jsp/uk/ing/home/index14c6.html?rf= https://www.albbplconline.com/ (hidden in there somewhere) https://www.nyfbonline.org/ https://www.fcbplcuk.com/ibank/secure/myaccount/disclaimer/asp/LogonFrame259...
plus, plus, plus many more ....
This requires a consolidated approach by all registrars, maybe registries even?
Right now "trust" is being sold down the drain at a rapid rate. Being in IT for close to 30 year I am short of neurotic of all things registrar and internet related, 100 times more knowledgeable than the average user in things internet related. Yet even I cannot say anymore what is sometimes real and what not.
What chance has the average consumer have? Yet while Rome is burning people are trying to attribute credit?
My 5c worth.
Derek Smythe
Evan Leibovitch wrote:
I find it fascinating -- and disturbing -- that one of our longest discussion threads of recent memory is not about policy, or even process, but assigning credit.
If only we could have something even half as engaging regarding the most pressing current issue (IMO) which is proposing an alternative to the massive excesses of the IRT report. Without an alternative in hand, that piece of crap is the only approach to trademarks that ICANN senior staff and Board have in their hands.
If that doesn't interest you, please find something else that does. There are certainly enough going on right now: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=rJKtp8gl3W5-ZcY_xMpPg5w Pick a working group and get involved, wake it up if you have to.
ALAC has an acute shortage of people stepping forward to help on policy. We have an otherwise-needless Executive Committee formed merely because there are so many vacuums to fill, which means the same small core of people are being called upon to to most of the work. And then people complain about inclusiveness...
Please -- those of you who have so keenly debated who deserves the honours for past actions -- consider that we have many more such potential actions ahead. Let's not make domain tasting the ONLY policy achievement we of which should be proud.
- Evan
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Derek Smythe wrote:
Since I have been accused of trolling, fear mongering etc I will not post this openly.
Um... It's too late for that, these are public mailing lists...
I strongly believe their should be some form of consumer protection at registry level, exactly the excuse used by the IRT crowd to justify why brands should be protected.
Sounds like you want to be part of the registrant right discussion going on. That group, like so many others, needs our participation. Are you interested? - Evan
Thanks Roberto, The discussion of Domain Tasting and the results I was announcing are certainly an opportunity to raise the issues that Karl did, but they were never a part of the discussion. The only monetary issue discussed was that there was *some* cost of supporting the volume of transactions caused by tasters, and this cost was born by the rest of us. But there was never any suggestion that either the activity or its removal would have a substantive impact on the registry fee. The real point is that there was a perceived problem and a lot of talk, ALAC decided to initiate some action instead of just talk, and the ultimate result was elimination of the problem. I am optimistic that our current GNSO-PDP on post-expiration domain name recovery will be a similar success story, and I encourage people to get involved in the PDP Working Group which has just started its deliberations. Alan At 14/08/2009 03:33 AM, Roberto Gaetano wrote:
Personally, I would not focus on the price as the main criterion for evaluating the success of the elimination of domain tasting. I think that the most important effect on consumers was the unavailability of names, that were used instead for different purposes. I agree with Alan, that ALAC can be proud of the fact that it demonstrated that it can indeed play a significant role. Incidentally, the ability of ALAC to play a significant role is one of the considerations on the table in the debate that is going on right now about having one or more Directors, elected by At-Large or ALAC, with voting rights. Cheers, Roberto
Disclaimer: I know that Karl and myself have different views on the matter
-----Original Message----- From: at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org [mailto:at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] On Behalf Of Karl Auerbach Sent: Wednesday, 12 August 2009 22:59 To: At-Large Worldwide Cc: ALAC Working List Subject: Re: [At-Large] ICANN Announcement on Domain Tasting
On 08/12/2009 01:21 PM, Alan Greenberg wrote:
As the organization that started this entire policy process, At-Large and ALAC can be proud of the results.
I'm not so sure about that.
The main problem with the massive add-grace stuff was not the churn but the fact that it was a transfer of costs from the "domainers", who were getting a free ride, onto the backs of the domain name buying public who were paying for the transaction costs and the lost opportunity costs due to the 5 day name lock-up.
When you or I acquire a .com name for a year we each have to pay a registry fee of about $7 to cover the purported costs that the registry incurs in order to handle our transaction and publish the name into the zone and operate the zone servers. We pay that fee even if we relinquish the name in a week.
That would suggest that in June 2008, where there were 15,738,292 AGP names, that the .com registry was bearing a cost (at that pegged $7 registry fee) of $110,168,044/month - or about $1,322,016,528/year.
There are two conclusions:
Either the .com registry has now saved over 1.3 billion $US that we were previously paying and which it is now retaining as profit.
Or the registry fee is pegged by ICANN at a hyper inflated level.
Either way, we the community of internet users are a Boston fish - we are scrod.
The point of this little exercise is to show that ICANN's fiat registry fees, based on thing more than hot air emitted by the registries and accompanied by no audit of actual registry costs, is costing domain name users a very large pile of money every year.
It is long past time that ICANN be required to perform a believable, public, and deep audit of registry costs and to adjust the registry fee component of domain name prices to be in conformance with those costs.
--karl--
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On 08/14/2009 12:33 AM, Roberto Gaetano wrote:
Personally, I would not focus on the price as the main criterion for evaluating the success of the elimination of domain tasting.
The point that I was trying to make was something altogether apart from the tasting issue. Rather, I was suggesting that the tasting issue provided yet another chunk of evidence that the registry fees are completely out-of-line with the actual cost of providing the registry services. The money that is removed from the pockets of the domain name buying public and transferred to the registries by virtue of these inflated registry fees accumulates every year into a fairly large chunk of money - measurable in several multiples of hundreds of millions of dollars. As I mentioned, the object should be to bring registry fees into conformance with actual registry costs. Unfortunately ICANN has never inquired, much less researched, what those costs actually are. And as a result, the community of internet users is being forced every year to pay the better part of a $billion in highly inflated fees to registries. --karl--
Karl Auerbach wrote:
On 08/14/2009 12:33 AM, Roberto Gaetano wrote:
Personally, I would not focus on the price as the main criterion for evaluating the success of the elimination of domain tasting.
The point that I was trying to make was something altogether apart from the tasting issue.
Rather, I was suggesting that the tasting issue provided yet another chunk of evidence that the registry fees are completely out-of-line with the actual cost of providing the registry services. And the cost of Coca Cola is totally out of line with the price of sugar and water. But that's not the point.
ICANN, its wisdom, has made the philosophical call that domain names are to be treated as commodities rather than identities, and as such are subject the the whims of the market. The price of a domain is related simply to what others are willing to pay for it, not the cost to deliver. Verisign's shareholders should expect no less. Having chosen the commodity path, it's up to ICANN to ensure healthy competition and protection from abuse. Beyond that, I am dubious about artificial price controls. If people think they're getting gouged, let's give them some alternatives. I think that this is why most folks in At-Large support new gTLDs and a diversity of registry operators -- the more the merrier, so long as there are some assertions of registrant rights (and production of such a document is now underway, though slowly). There's nothing *requiring* a registry to be domainer-friendly. Despite the obvious good intentions, I am extremely wary of injecting dubious price-policing into a free market. If it's not a free market, then let's address *that*. - Evan
On 08/14/2009 09:18 AM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
Karl Auerbach wrote:
Rather, I was suggesting that the tasting issue provided yet another chunk of evidence that the registry fees are completely out-of-line with the actual cost of providing the registry services. And the cost of Coca Cola is totally out of line with the price of sugar and water. But that's not the point.
And, unlike those 80,000,000 people locked into .com, Coca Cola is subject to competitive pressures.
ICANN, its wisdom, has made the philosophical call that domain names are to be treated as commodities rather than identities, and as such are subject the the whims of the market. The price of a domain is related simply to what others are willing to pay for it, not the cost to deliver. Verisign's shareholders should expect no less.
As I mentioned in my prior email, the notion that a person or company can free simply pick up its domain name identity and move to a new one is a notion that ignores the massive switching costs (most of which are intangibles, such as identity, "goodwill", and newer things like the accumulation of search engine links to the old name.) And ICANN has never "made the philosophical call" - there is no concrete resolution that says that registries are free to charge what the market will bear. Indeed ICANN's practice from the outset has been to the contrary. If one were to accept your premise that ICANN has made a "philosophical call" that registries are in competition with one another, then ICANN would have released the caps it has imposed on registry fees. Things might be different if ICANN were allowing new TLDs. But ICANN has not, and it appears that it may be yet another decade before that happens. .com is a very special TLD - for a very long time it was the only place that many of us were allowed to put our internet roots. When I registered many of my names I simply was not permitted to go into .org, .net, or .edu. Millions of us are locked into .com for better or worse; and ICANN has sold our internet souls to Verisign to bleed $7 per year per name, year in and year out.
Having chosen the commodity path, it's up to ICANN to ensure healthy competition and protection from abuse. Beyond that, I am dubious about artificial price controls.
Once a person has established an identity and built-up that identity in a TLD, as a practical matter there longer exists a competitive opportunity to change. TLDs compete with one another only for newcomers. There is no real competitive marketplace for those who have already settled into a TLD. We saw a similar situation here in the US in the mobile phone markets. Before phone number portability came into effect those who wanted to jump to another mobile phone provider had to measure the sometimes substantial costs of changing their phone number. That put a substantial damper on the competition between mobile phone providers. But once number portability came into play that cost vanished and competitive forces became much stronger.
If people think they're getting gouged,
To borrow a paraphrase from Hamlet: Seems, .. nay it is. We *are* getting gouged. With ICANN's help. To the tune of the better part of $1,000,000,000 (USD) per year. let's give them some
alternatives.
For those already locked in new TLDs is, at best, a faint hope. I think that this is why most folks in At-Large support
new gTLDs and a diversity of registry operators -- the more the merrier,
I agree with that one and have for years (See http://www.cavebear.com/archive/icann-board/platform.htm#dnspol-tldpol ). In fact I have my own TLD - .ewe at http://www.cavebear.com/eweregistry [URL change coming soon, if I ever get a chance to finish the registry code to make it a real working system.] But having new TLDs does not redress the fact that ICANN is allowing Verisign and others to bleed their captive customers.
Despite the obvious good intentions, I am extremely wary of injecting dubious price-policing into a free market. If it's not a free market, then let's address *that*.
If you really are in favor of what you say, then I would suspect that you advocate the dropping of the registry fee caps that are in ICANN's contracts and in its legal settlement with Verisign. --karl--
Evan, We can hardly say that .com business has something to do with free market. It's sure for fact that .com has naturally evolved to become most valuable domain commodity incomparable to any other TLD whatsoever. In the middle of the process, however, ICANN honorable establishment decided to accept eternal renewals thus de facto supporting monopoly over the widest part of domain market. This is quite far from the belief that ICANN should ensure healthy competition. Realizing this one should not be dubious about artificial price controls as a logical consequence of such a monopoly-dominant decision. Domain tasting is in somewhat similar situation. We are all here proud of achieving something that has significantly decreased the abuse (thanks God), at least for the time being, but it is to say that it was again ICANN who established the counter-productive concept of AGP despite publicly expressed reservations from the very beginning when the tasting appeared to become that abusive. Both situations have something in common, ICANN's tendency to solve problems it generates. Domain tasting is thus ICANN's victory over ICANN. Dominik -----Original Message----- From: at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org [mailto:at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] On Behalf Of Evan Leibovitch Sent: Friday, August 14, 2009 6:18 PM To: At-Large Worldwide Cc: 'ALAC Working List' Subject: Re: [At-Large] ICANN Announcement on Domain Tasting Karl Auerbach wrote:
On 08/14/2009 12:33 AM, Roberto Gaetano wrote:
Personally, I would not focus on the price as the main criterion for evaluating the success of the elimination of domain tasting.
The point that I was trying to make was something altogether apart from the tasting issue.
Rather, I was suggesting that the tasting issue provided yet another chunk of evidence that the registry fees are completely out-of-line with the actual cost of providing the registry services. And the cost of Coca Cola is totally out of line with the price of sugar and water. But that's not the point.
ICANN, its wisdom, has made the philosophical call that domain names are to be treated as commodities rather than identities, and as such are subject the the whims of the market. The price of a domain is related simply to what others are willing to pay for it, not the cost to deliver. Verisign's shareholders should expect no less. Having chosen the commodity path, it's up to ICANN to ensure healthy competition and protection from abuse. Beyond that, I am dubious about artificial price controls. If people think they're getting gouged, let's give them some alternatives. I think that this is why most folks in At-Large support new gTLDs and a diversity of registry operators -- the more the merrier, so long as there are some assertions of registrant rights (and production of such a document is now underway, though slowly). There's nothing *requiring* a registry to be domainer-friendly. Despite the obvious good intentions, I am extremely wary of injecting dubious price-policing into a free market. If it's not a free market, then let's address *that*. - Evan _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large_atlarge-lists.i cann.org At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
Honestly Karl, I wish domain names cost $100/year. There could be a hardship claus that people could apply for or something if they really can't afford a domain name. But at $100/year, we would have less spammers and scammers using domain names and speculators would own a much smaller list of domain names. As far as businesses are concerned, if they can't invest $100/year in their online location, maybe they should rethink their business plan. A spammer can put a blemish on a domain name through bad use and get it banned from google and other search engines. Then when they let the domain expire or drop it, the new registrant has no idea the domain name has problems. Your point is well-taken and understood. Just want to add that there are more concerns than just the freedom to get a domain name to consider. Chris McElroy ----- Original Message ----- From: "Karl Auerbach" <karl@cavebear.com> To: "At-Large Worldwide" <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Cc: "'ALAC Working List'" <alac@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Sent: Friday, August 14, 2009 11:52 AM Subject: Re: [At-Large] ICANN Announcement on Domain Tasting
On 08/14/2009 12:33 AM, Roberto Gaetano wrote:
Personally, I would not focus on the price as the main criterion for evaluating the success of the elimination of domain tasting.
The point that I was trying to make was something altogether apart from the tasting issue.
Rather, I was suggesting that the tasting issue provided yet another chunk of evidence that the registry fees are completely out-of-line with the actual cost of providing the registry services.
The money that is removed from the pockets of the domain name buying public and transferred to the registries by virtue of these inflated registry fees accumulates every year into a fairly large chunk of money - measurable in several multiples of hundreds of millions of dollars.
As I mentioned, the object should be to bring registry fees into conformance with actual registry costs.
Unfortunately ICANN has never inquired, much less researched, what those costs actually are. And as a result, the community of internet users is being forced every year to pay the better part of a $billion in highly inflated fees to registries.
--karl--
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Chris McElroy 786-317-8774 wrote:
But at $100/year, we would have less spammers and scammers using domain names and speculators would own a much smaller list of domain names. ... A spammer can put a blemish on a domain name through bad use and get it banned from google and other search engines. Then when they let the domain expire or drop it, the new registrant has no idea the domain name has problems.
True and not true. Case in point: cpeb-online.com just registered. I was previously alerted to this domain a while ago by the legitimate owners of the bank being spoofed. Identity theft was used for the registration. It was put on hold by Tucows after an alert to them that it was being used to spoof a bank. Now somebody seemingly else has registered it. However, digging a bit bit deeper shows it is once again the same party who manages to find his way through an incredible number of domains per annum. Historic records shows he may run between registrars trying to register the same domains numerous times, many drop and registrations not accepted until eventually the registration sticks somewhere. In the process he reveals the numerous identities he uses. The reason why this is so easy for him, is that he is using credit cards, other peoples' cards. This has been verified to be the case in the past. :( For those interested in digging - PAULMARTINSCHAMBER.COM is a missing link. This is one guy, yet we have many of them in the scam, spam, abuse arena. However, these actors devalue if anything, the market value of a domain name. What would you pay for cpeb-online.com if it matched your domaining requirements? As an attorney said a few months ago after finding out about a domain spoofing him and registered to his address (and as such legally belonging to him), though registered via a free email address: "I might prefer to simply allow the name to be canceled as I have no wish to be associated with what might have have been a vehicle used to facilitate frauds." A consolidated registrar/registry/whoever approach is needed to weed out these bad actors and that may well include a domain price hike or using extra funds some believe to be available resulting from the less AGP drops. Or maybe not either? The need to protect the very resource they a earning a living with is also in their best interest. It will also save them on and their resellers on charge backs. So yes Chris, agreed, abusers do devalue a domain name's worth. However financial barriers is not the answer as this will simply mean more of other people's money will be stolen as well while punishing legitimate domain users using their own money to pay for domains. Derek
... A spammer can put a blemish on a domain name through bad use and get it banned from google and other search engines. Then when they let the domain expire or drop it, the new registrant has no idea the domain name has problems.
Your point is well-taken and understood. Just want to add that there are more concerns than just the freedom to get a domain name to consider.
Chris McElroy
people's money will be stolen as well while punishing legitimate domain users using their own money to pay for domains.
Domains should have no value, this whole mess started when we converted the DNS into a giant flashing billboard where the big names compete for space and speculators started buying space even if not needed with the hope that sooner or later somebody else with big pockets and need for space would make them rich. Perhaps is time to start envisioning a complete new resource naming scheme, meanwhile we have to find the way to deal with what we have today. So far, increasing the size of the billboard won't help much. My .02
Jorge Amodio wrote:
Domains should have no value,
This is not practical. A name is part of an identity, a company name, a personal name or whatever. We simply cannot escape that fact. The natural tendency is to pull this logic into the domain name space. There is no harm in another "Jorge" also living. There is harm in another "Jorge" trying to stop you using your name, or demanding you pay a premium for using that name above another. Just so if there is another party fraudulently claiming to be "Jorge", your identity and using your address, and committing fraud using your name. That is identity theft in addition to the fraud the scammer or whatever is trying to commit using your name. Likewise if you have a company "Jorge Inc" and somebody else registers "Jorge Inc Online" and abuses your good name and the goodwill you built up in your client base for their own monetary or fraudulent purposes. We simply cannot deny the value of a domain name, not directly as a $10 virtual purchase, but definitely indirectly in terms of harm. Derek
Domains should have no value,
This is not practical.
In the current state of affairs, I agree. The root problem relies that we are using the Domain Name System for something it was not designed for.
A name is part of an identity, a company name, a personal name or whatever. We simply cannot escape that fact. The natural tendency is to pull this logic into the domain name space.
Right, but the DNS was not conceived as an "identity" system and we imposed uniqueness on each branch of the tree where we can't have another jorge.com, then as proof of concept and to expand the name space we have now jorge.biz, but wait there are many more jorges out there, so now we'll create a couple of thousands gTLDs to hopefully accommodate them all. On the other hand Joe sees that jorge is very popular or well known, so he will take a couple of jorge.whatever with the hope that one of the jorges will pay him for that name, and also as you said we have Jim that wants to pretend to be jorge, and then all this becomes a roman circus and a merchants paradise with lax regulations where a name becomes a commodity with dubious value. These issues will never go away until we come up with a solution to the root problem, which is that the DNS is not a directory service. Meanwhile domain tasting, front running, hijacking, etc, etc, will keep happening and the issue is how to mitigate or minimize the problem and its side effects. My .02 Regards Jorge.notheone
Great points Derek. it is complicated. It still boils down to ICANN needing to open more commercially-viable tlds and stop with the mobis and museums and aeros just to make it appear that they are approving new tlds. With more tlds, the Internet could almost read like a phone book and it would be easier to find what you are looking for. ICANN's collusion to keep dot com in the forefront is hurting commerce and it needs to stop. There have already been lawsuits regarding the AGP, NetSol's practice of using it to hold up registrations, etc. Now some of those problems have been addressed. Are lawsuits the only action that ICANN will pay attention to? I'm launching dot SEO soon. I plan to apply to ICANN for approval. I also plan to proceed regardless of their decision. There are workarounds for everything. And in the end there are always lawyers. I'm pretty much past the whole "Let's appeal to ICANN to do the right thing" approach. They change the rules as they go along to suit their friends. Everything from the makeup of the BoD to the approval of new tlds gets the rules changed whenever they feel like it. They have mismanaged the entire process from day 1. But ICANN, you will have a chance to do the right thing when I apply for approval. We'll see how that goes. The days of you being the only option for someone to run their own tld are pretty much over. If you don't know that already, someone is misinforming you. I still hold out sincere hope that ICANN will change it's ways, but then I'm idealistic. My realistic side says that I may yet have to file another lawsuit to get things done. I really hate going that route, but I can't let ICANN dictate what business I can or cannot start. My business plan is solid, but none of ICANN's business. The BoD does not have the expertise to decide what is or is not a viable business plan nor do they have a mandate to do so. My finances are not their business either. Even government contracts are awarded to companies that do not yet have all the finances. It is assumed that with contract in hand, financing can be found. ICANN insists that needs to be done before you apply creating a barrier to small business owners getting into the domain business. Not to mention the enormous application fee they are asking for. There are so many ways they are violating the laws that support free enterprise and free trade, that it is virtually a lawyers wet dream. They just haven't been challenged enough yet. So far, the only thing I've seen them respond to is legal action. They certainly have a history of ignoring anything resembling a bottom-up consensus. As I said. I hold out hope and we will see soon. Chris McElroy ----- Original Message ----- From: "Derek Smythe" <derek@aa419.org> To: "At-Large Worldwide" <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 2:44 PM Subject: Re: [At-Large] ICANN Announcement on Domain Tasting
Chris McElroy 786-317-8774 wrote:
But at $100/year, we would have less spammers and scammers using domain names and speculators would own a much smaller list of domain names. ... A spammer can put a blemish on a domain name through bad use and get it banned from google and other search engines. Then when they let the domain expire or drop it, the new registrant has no idea the domain name has problems.
True and not true.
Case in point: cpeb-online.com just registered.
I was previously alerted to this domain a while ago by the legitimate owners of the bank being spoofed. Identity theft was used for the registration. It was put on hold by Tucows after an alert to them that it was being used to spoof a bank.
Now somebody seemingly else has registered it. However, digging a bit bit deeper shows it is once again the same party who manages to find his way through an incredible number of domains per annum. Historic records shows he may run between registrars trying to register the same domains numerous times, many drop and registrations not accepted until eventually the registration sticks somewhere.
In the process he reveals the numerous identities he uses.
The reason why this is so easy for him, is that he is using credit cards, other peoples' cards. This has been verified to be the case in the past. :(
For those interested in digging - PAULMARTINSCHAMBER.COM is a missing link.
This is one guy, yet we have many of them in the scam, spam, abuse arena.
However, these actors devalue if anything, the market value of a domain name. What would you pay for cpeb-online.com if it matched your domaining requirements?
As an attorney said a few months ago after finding out about a domain spoofing him and registered to his address (and as such legally belonging to him), though registered via a free email address: "I might prefer to simply allow the name to be canceled as I have no wish to be associated with what might have have been a vehicle used to facilitate frauds."
A consolidated registrar/registry/whoever approach is needed to weed out these bad actors and that may well include a domain price hike or using extra funds some believe to be available resulting from the less AGP drops.
Or maybe not either? The need to protect the very resource they a earning a living with is also in their best interest. It will also save them on and their resellers on charge backs.
So yes Chris, agreed, abusers do devalue a domain name's worth. However financial barriers is not the answer as this will simply mean more of other people's money will be stolen as well while punishing legitimate domain users using their own money to pay for domains.
Derek
... A spammer can put a blemish on a domain name through bad use and get it banned from google and other search engines. Then when they let the domain expire or drop it, the new registrant has no idea the domain name has problems.
Your point is well-taken and understood. Just want to add that there are more concerns than just the freedom to get a domain name to consider.
Chris McElroy
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On 08/17/2009 10:46 AM, Chris McElroy 786-317-8774 wrote:
Honestly Karl, I wish domain names cost $100/year. There could be a hardship claus that people could apply for or something if they really can't afford a domain name. But at $100/year, we would have less spammers and scammers using domain names and speculators would own a much smaller list of domain names.
Similarly my wife and I wish that airplane tickets cost what they did back in the 1970's (with adjustments for inflation), that way a typical flight would be well over $1000 which would discourage people bringing undisciplined children and would allow the airlines to give better service. The point of this is that we all tend to seek to regulate the behaviour of others; we have a natural tendency to seek to impose anti-competitive rules to satisfy our own personal desires. Competition, particularly in a technology based area, brings change. The primary argument against open competition (competing roots) in the DNS area is that it would bring the possibility of change that might disturb some people. That argument, however, leads to stasis. It could have been used by the telegraph people to argue that email would be duplicative and would confuse people. And the introduction of the push-button tone-dial telephone certainly brought some confusion - "what are those # and * buttons for?" My wife's mother was confused by her cell phone because it had no dial tone. If we were to use the arguments that fly around DNS then we ought to ban mobile phones. You are, of course, free to pay a lot of money for domain names, I don't think registrars will turn you down. But the choice of one ought not to be imposed onto the many. --karl--
As a matter of fact the document thanks GNSO, not ALAC ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alan Greenberg" <alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca> To: "ALAC Working List" <alac@atlarge-lists.icann.org>, "At-Large Worldwide" <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Sent: Thursday, 13 August, 2009 8:21:22 AM GMT +12:00 Fiji Subject: [At-Large] ICANN Announcement on Domain Tasting Please see the announcement and report (<http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-12aug09-en.htm>http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-12aug09-en.htm) ICANN posted today about the impact of the AGP Budget Provision and the AGP Limits Policy on Domain Tasting. As the organization that started this entire policy process, At-Large and ALAC can be proud of the results. Alan
The report gives credit to the GNSO for developing the policy, which is correct as the GNSO voted to initiate a policy development process, formed a working group (with At-Large participation), and ultimately approved the resultant policy and recommended that the Board support it. All of that was driven off of an Issues Report investigating Domain tasting and that Issues Report was created at the request of the ALAC. Domain tasting was an issue that had been discussed for quite some time within ICANN, but the ALAC was the group that forced the question and started to formal process to address Domain Tasting. But once that process was initiated by the ALAC, there was a lot of work, both official and unofficial done by a lot of parties to create the end result. And is should be noted that despite the negative comments raised in this thread about registries, several registries played a large and crucial role in creating the end result. Alan At 12/08/2009 07:01 PM, Franck Martin wrote:
As a matter of fact the document thanks GNSO, not ALAC
----- Original Message ----- From: "Alan Greenberg" <alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca> To: "ALAC Working List" <alac@atlarge-lists.icann.org>, "At-Large Worldwide" <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Sent: Thursday, 13 August, 2009 8:21:22 AM GMT +12:00 Fiji Subject: [At-Large] ICANN Announcement on Domain Tasting
Please see the announcement and report (<http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-12aug09-en.htm>http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-12aug09-en.htm)
ICANN posted today about the impact of the AGP Budget Provision and the AGP Limits Policy on Domain Tasting.
As the organization that started this entire policy process, At-Large and ALAC can be proud of the results.
Alan
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large_atlarge-lists.icann...
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Indeed the old numbers were indecent! The impact on security was huge as I remember a closed presentation of VeriSign to the board in 2007. Vanda Scartezini POLO Consultores Associados & IT Trend Alameda Santos 1470 cjs 1407/8 01418-903 Sao Paulo,SP. Fone + 55 11 3266.6253 Mob + 5511 8181.1464 -----Original Message----- From: at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org [mailto:at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] On Behalf Of Alan Greenberg Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2009 5:21 PM To: ALAC Working List; At-Large Worldwide Subject: [At-Large] ICANN Announcement on Domain Tasting Please see the announcement and report (<http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-12aug09-en.htm>http://w ww.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-12aug09-en.htm) ICANN posted today about the impact of the AGP Budget Provision and the AGP Limits Policy on Domain Tasting. In short, the changes are dramatic. There were 17,668750 AGP deletes in June 2008. Following the ICANN budget levy on excessive deletes, the number decreased to 2,785,605. With the implementation of the AGP limit policy in April 2009, the total number of AGP deletes was 58,218, an overall decrease of 99.7%. Put another way, in June 2008, for .COM, there were 2,122,794 net new domains added, and an additional 15,738,292 domain names added and then AGP-deleted for an AGP delete rate of 741% In April 2009, there were 2,084,868 net new domains added, and an additional 37,519 domain names added and then AGP-deleted for an AGP delete rate of under 2%. Under the policy, an AGP-delete rate of 10% is allowed without financial penalty, per registrar, to allow for exceptional conditions. It was expected that few registrars would exceed this 10% and in fact in April only 22 registrars exceeded 10%, and there were only 432 excessive AGP-deletes. As the organization that started this entire policy process, At-Large and ALAC can be proud of the results. Alan _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large_atlarge-lists.icann .org At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
Dear All.: As ALAC member, and part of Domaing Tasting WG, and in my particular case as member of South American NGO we are who presented an statement about this some time ago. I'm so proud at this moment - a priori - in relation with the ICANN's desition taken by on AGP matter. We presented timely an statement where we asked for a fast AGP elimination. For that we are at the begining so happy with this measure, but we have reservations about their effective implementation. We are in according with comments who talk about we were who subsidized to who abuse with domaing tasting, and for that, we want to know how these companies would be punish, or how we could obtain a redress from these companies, and if ICANN had thought about this. buscar Carlos Dionisio AguirreInternational Director of AGEIA DENSI http://ar.ageiadensi.org
From: vanda@uol.com.br To: at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org; alac@atlarge-lists.icann.org Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2009 21:35:22 -0300 Subject: Re: [ALAC] [At-Large] ICANN Announcement on Domain Tasting
Indeed the old numbers were indecent! The impact on security was huge as I remember a closed presentation of VeriSign to the board in 2007.
Vanda Scartezini POLO Consultores Associados & IT Trend Alameda Santos 1470 cjs 1407/8 01418-903 Sao Paulo,SP. Fone + 55 11 3266.6253 Mob + 5511 8181.1464
-----Original Message----- From: at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org [mailto:at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] On Behalf Of Alan Greenberg Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2009 5:21 PM To: ALAC Working List; At-Large Worldwide Subject: [At-Large] ICANN Announcement on Domain Tasting
Please see the announcement and report (<http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-12aug09-en.htm>http://w ww.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-12aug09-en.htm) ICANN posted today about the impact of the AGP Budget Provision and the AGP Limits Policy on Domain Tasting.
In short, the changes are dramatic. There were 17,668750 AGP deletes in June 2008. Following the ICANN budget levy on excessive deletes, the number decreased to 2,785,605. With the implementation of the AGP limit policy in April 2009, the total number of AGP deletes was 58,218, an overall decrease of 99.7%.
Put another way, in June 2008, for .COM, there were 2,122,794 net new domains added, and an additional 15,738,292 domain names added and then AGP-deleted for an AGP delete rate of 741%
In April 2009, there were 2,084,868 net new domains added, and an additional 37,519 domain names added and then AGP-deleted for an AGP delete rate of under 2%.
Under the policy, an AGP-delete rate of 10% is allowed without financial penalty, per registrar, to allow for exceptional conditions. It was expected that few registrars would exceed this 10% and in fact in April only 22 registrars exceeded 10%, and there were only 432 excessive AGP-deletes.
As the organization that started this entire policy process, At-Large and ALAC can be proud of the results.
Alan
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At-Large Online: http://www.atlarge.icann.org ALAC Working Wiki: http://st.icann.org/alac
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participants (18)
-
Alan Greenberg -
carlos aguirre -
Chris McElroy 786-317-8774 -
Christian de Larrinaga -
Derek Smythe -
Dominik Filipp -
Elisabeth Porteneuve -
Evan Leibovitch -
Franck Martin -
Izumi AIZU -
Jean Armour Polly -
John R. Levine -
Jorge Amodio -
Karl Auerbach -
Patrick Vande Walle -
Roberto Gaetano -
Ross Rader -
Vanda Scartezini