the GNSO must have a home somewhere for resellers and registry service providers.
If by home you mean membership in a SG or constituency, Why? That's the thinking that is going to get us bogged down into all kinds of unworkable complications. I personally do not believe that it is necessary, or wise to believe, that every entity is going to fit neatly into a SG or constituency. The more important test should be wheher or not they can meaningfully participate. Since one of the main purposes of the BGC was to move the policy making role more into a WG model and away from the Council being legislators, then participation in the WGs is actually the most meaningful way to participate, and that is open to all. Tim -------- Original Message -------- Subject: RE: [council] Registry Operators From: Alan Greenberg <alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca> Date: Wed, July 15, 2009 9:43 am To: "Council GNSO" <council@gnso.icann.org> To be clear, I only mentioned registrants to demonstrate that the concept of signing contracts which can change suddenly is not unheard of. I was not proposing that they become members (in any form) of the contracted parties house. I was suggesting that resellers might fit there, as the conditions under which they operate COULD and DO change based on new consensus policies. However, my main point was that (in my mind) the GNSO must have a home somewhere for resellers and registry service providers. Having all SG and houses lock them out does not seem like a credible model to me. Alan At 15/07/2009 10:25 AM, Gomes, Chuck wrote:
Alan,
There is at least one flaw in your analogy. Registrants and resellers have a choice in the registrars they will work with and each of those registrars have their own registration/reseller agreements. Registries and registrars have no choice: they all must agree to abide by consensus policies.
Chuck
-----Original Message----- From: owner-council@gnso.icann.org [mailto:owner-council@gnso.icann.org] On Behalf Of Alan Greenberg Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2009 11:41 PM To: Council GNSO Subject: RE: [council] Registry Operators
Chuck, that argument made sense when ICANN was started and the world was a lot simpler, but I am not sure it is as strong today.
Today, registrars and registries effectively (even though not always using the term) sub-contract parts of their ICANN-mandated responsibilities to other parties. Therefore those other parties are indirectly but effectively bound by consensus policy as well. Using this argument, registry service providers and registrar resellers could well be defined as "contracted parties".
The argument regarding being bound by changeable terms may well be true in the general case, but in relation to ICANN matters, pretty much every domain registrant agrees to terms that can unilaterally be changed without notice by registrars.
But regardless of the specific arguments, we seem to have a group of parties who are or will be significant players in the domain game, and both GNSO houses say that they cannot belong. That is not a credible and sustainable model.
Alan
At 14/07/2009 11:01 PM, Gomes, Chuck wrote:
It gets very frustrating to go through this same issue over and over again. There is a very clear reason why the RyC and the RrC are restricted to those who have registry or registrar agreements with ICANN: In those agreements, registries and registrars commit in advance to implementing consensus policies that are within the picket fence without having any knowledge of the details of those polices. That is a very exceptional situation in the world of business contracting as I have to believe attorneys know full well. As a result of that 'blind' commitment, registries and registrars can be seriously impacted by policy development actions of the GNSO.
I can accept the fact that some may not have any empathy for the contracted parties and may not like this but let's at least not continue to retread ground that we have covered many times before.
Chuck
-----Original Message----- From: owner-council@gnso.icann.org [mailto:owner-council@gnso.icann.org] On Behalf Of Rosette, Kristina Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2009 10:47 PM To: Council GNSO Subject: RE: [council] Registry Operators
Am I the only who is troubled by the fact that restricting membership in the registrar and registry constituency to entities that are ICANN contracted parties effectively gives ICANN control over which entities are and are not members and the timing by which entities become eligible for membership?
-----Original Message----- From: owner-council@gnso.icann.org [mailto:owner-council@gnso.icann.org] On Behalf Of Bruce Tonkin Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2009 9:25 PM To: Council GNSO Subject: RE: [council] Registry Operators
Hello All,
Agreed, it is an old, important issue that is still
unresolved and
must be resolved before the GNSO restructure can take place.
It is certainly worth considering further.
Membership of the registry and registrar constituency has generally been very clear - based on the legal entity being a contracted party with ICANN as either a TLD manager or a gTLD registrar. This information is publicly available on the ICANN website.
There are other parties involved in the process of the domain name value chain.
E.g
(1) Consultants - there are many consultants and lawyers that provide services to the members of the registry and registrar constituency or members of other constituencies - these consultants and lawyers can be split across the business constituency and the IP constituency.
(2) Internet Service Providers - while some purely provide connectivity - many of these companies have moved into value added services - and many are significant suppliers of domain names (either as accredited registrars, or as resellers of accredited registrars).
(3) Other domain name resellers - e.g portals (e.g Yahoo), software companies (e.g Microsoft), search engines (e.g Google), web hosting companies - there are wide range of domain name resellers. Some of thee are very large companies and supply large volumes (e.g over 100,000 names) of domain names to their customers. At different times staff or consultants/external lawyers of these companies have been members of registrar, business constituency or IP constituency.
(4) Domainers - these companies operate a portfolio of domain names - they often do not supply domain name registration services to other parties - but may sell some of their domain name licences from time-to-time. They may be accredited registrars (usually to get the lowest possible wholesale price for domains), or may simply be resellers. Where they are not registrars - it is not clear what constituency that should be members of. They would probably consider themselves to be members of the business constituency - as they are "business users" of domain names (earn revenue from advertising, or from the future sale of the domain name licence), and not involved in supplying domain name registration services to third parties.
For consultants or lawyers it is often complex as they may have some customers/clients that are associated with the domain name supply industry and some customers/clients that are not.
In many cases large companies have different departments (or legal subsidiaries) - e.g a legal department, network connectivity department, domains/hosting department - and it can be convenient to have staff members of different departments/subsidiaries to join different constituencies (e.g Registrar, ISP constituency, IP constituency).
So do you make the decision on the basis of the corporate entity (could be operating across multiple area of interest in the GNSO), or on the basis of the individual (may work for a particular department of a corporate, or may work for many clients).
Ultimately this will probably be hard to resolve. Perhaps the best to hope for is that members of constituencies clearly define their potential conflicts of interest. This could be at a corporate level and at an individual level (e.g identify clients involved in different constituencies if a consultant). It would also be useful to require this to happen at the beginning of establishing working groups (not as a method of exclusion - but to clearly state potential conflicts).
The reality is that many members of the GNSO community can potentially participate in multiple roles. Trying to create very tight exclusion rules (e.g you can be a member of constituency x - provided you have no other relationship with any member of another constituency) may unnecessarily restrict participation.
Regards, Bruce Tonkin