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"Bruce Tonkin" <Bruce.Tonkin@melbourneit.com.au> 10/07/03 08:27PM >>> I propose the following motion for voting at the next Council meeting (Thursday 16 Oct)

"The GNSO Council requests that the Staff Manager produce an Issues Report on the need for a predictable procedure for the introduction of new registry services by Monday 27 October 2003 for consideration at the ICANN meeting in Carthage".

As things stand now I would oppose this motion unless the date of the issues report is moved back to late November or some other more reasonable time frame, giving both staff and the new Council members time to consider the complexities of the form of business regulation into which we are being pushed. Since ICANN's new counsel and Dr. Twomey, both of whom are very smart people but have no experience in industry regulation or regulatory economics, are copied on this message, let me make it clear that in some ways I wouldn't mind watching ICANN drive off this cliff at 80 miles an hour - the wreckage would be much more colorful and entertaining - but the impact will be softer if we slow down a bit, and we might navigate some of the twists and turns more adroitly. This kind of haste would be much more appropriate for the new TLD process that the Department of Commerce was promised, seeing as how it's been nearly 6 years and no regular procedure for additions has been defined. And the issues are not unrelated - VeriSign's antics would be much less significant if the market were less concentrated, and it would give ICANN a chance to develop new template contracts for TLDs that might address some of the post- Sitefinder issues. Unless one believes that VeriSign and the other registries are going to inundate us with a host of new "registry services" in the next six months (and if you do believe that, let's see some evidence), I think this railroad needs a brake. --MM