Re: [NA-Discuss] Action Items
In what you have written below John, you have used the term "individual user" at least three times in a more or less technical way. I assume then that you have a fairly rigorous i.e. non-ambiguous definition for "individual user".
Nothing exotic, "individual user" means, well, an individual user. People who use the net for their own purposes, as opposed to people who use it within a business or organizational context. There is a difference of opinion within the ALAC whether that means people who register domains for their own use, or all people who use the net including the large majority who have never registered a domain and never will. Personally, I mean the latter group, since there are serious issues that affect them and aren't addressed elsewhere like domain squatting. The whole issue of .XXX and similar domains is also an issue not well addressed elsewhere. The porn industry has decidedly mixed enthusiasm for it, and it's supposed to provide a benefit for individuals who either want more access or less access to porn for themselves and their families. There's also considerable overlap between individual use and other kinds, e.g., if you send email to your spouse from work asking what groceries to pick up on the way home, that seems to me individual use even though you might be using your work access to do it. R's, John
John, Where do users of cybercafes (those with email addresses or those without who just surf) fit in? Are each of these "individual users" and in this scenario how in practice could you separate an Internet "user" from a member of the general public since almost everyone at least in OECD countries is interacting at some point during their day with some Internet use or other (and here I'm not even thinking about folks who are seamlessly using their cells as Internet access points? (And from a representational perspective does each of the individual's separate points of access count as being a separate "individual user"?) Also what about those who use common Internet access points as for example Telecentres where the "use" (and user) is more likely to be a family, an NGO or even a village rather than what we would consider to be an "individual"? In this case is the "individual user" each individual member of each family/organization/community or is it the collective in each case--if that is so, what possible meaning could the term "individual" user have? And in case anyone thinks that this discussion is a purely academic or abstract one, the two scenarios I've pointed to above right now probably constitute a majority of the world's Internet users (China in the first case and India in the second) and they have only started in the longer process of extending the Internet into their various hinterlands and hinterland populations. My sense is that the terminology that is being used here is highly culturally specific. I don't have a ready answer to the issue but I think it is important that we recognize that while we may all be using the same words, the meaning (or conceptual frames) that we apply to them may not at all be the same--and for me at least, the notion of "individual user" is one of those terms. MG -----Original Message----- From: na-discuss-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org [mailto:na-discuss-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] On Behalf Of John L Sent: April 18, 2007 1:44 PM To: mgurst@vcn.bc.ca Cc: NA Discuss Subject: Re: [NA-Discuss] Action Items
In what you have written below John, you have used the term "individual user" at least three times in a more or less technical way. I assume then that you have a fairly rigorous i.e. non-ambiguous
definition for "individual user".
Nothing exotic, "individual user" means, well, an individual user. People who use the net for their own purposes, as opposed to people who use it within a business or organizational context. There is a difference of opinion within the ALAC whether that means people who register domains for their own use, or all people who use the net including the large majority who have never registered a domain and never will. Personally, I mean the latter group, since there are serious issues that affect them and aren't addressed elsewhere like domain squatting. The whole issue of .XXX and similar domains is also an issue not well addressed elsewhere. The porn industry has decidedly mixed enthusiasm for it, and it's supposed to provide a benefit for individuals who either want more access or less access to porn for themselves and their families. There's also considerable overlap between individual use and other kinds, e.g., if you send email to your spouse from work asking what groceries to pick up on the way home, that seems to me individual use even though you might be using your work access to do it. R's, John _______________________________________________ NA-Discuss mailing list NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss_atlarge-lists .icann.org --- Draft MoU with ICANN: http://www.icannwiki.org/NA_RALO_MOU Draft Operating Principles: http://www.icannwiki.org/NA_RALO_OP !DSPAM:2676,4626837a273381646359433!
Where do users of cybercafes (those with email addresses or those without who just surf) fit in? Are each of these "individual users"
Sure. I don't see them as having interests significantly different from those of users who depend on an ISP for access and mail. Cybercafe users have little trouble setting up e-mail accounts on web mail providers, and all are at the mercy of their providers for their online identity.
in this scenario how in practice could you separate an Internet "user" from a member of the general public ...
In developed countries, you're right, they're approximately the same set of people.
Also what about those who use common Internet access points ...
Seems to me that the individuals are all the people using the access point. Same idea if they're using mobile phones, either their own phones or if they rent phones by the call from phone ladies in developing countries.
My sense is that the terminology that is being used here is highly culturally specific.
I don't intend for them to be culturally specific, and I hope we don't get bogged down in technical details in a vain attempt to map users to devices or IP addresses or e-mail addresses. Individual users are people. I am one user even though I use six different computers in a typical day, and if six people share a computer down the street or on the other side of the world, they are six users, not one. I'm really glad that you brought up these scenarios, because these are exactly the users who are invisible in ICANN's debates. The WHOIS argument is a notable example -- many of the arguments advanced for WHOIS privacy are about people who want to register their own domains to host a web site to make political statements and want to avoid reprisals for those statements based on tracking them through their domain registration. While I believe that such people exist, they must be about 0.001% of the users in the developed world, and 0.00001% of the users in LDCs. I'd like to spend less time on technically appealing exotica and more on questions like how do you make e-mail work for legitimate individual users in west Africa when so much of the mail from that part of the world is sent by 419 criminals. R's, John
http://regbits.info/2007/04/18/whats-wrong-with-resellers/ At the Lisbon ICANN meeting, we saw the beginnings of a good community discussion about improving the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) in light of what weve learned from the problems exposed by the RegisterFly situation. Among several issues raised was the very evident friction between RegisterFly (as a reseller for eNom) and eNom, and the problems customers experienced as a result of the breakdown in the relationship. In the public forum, Elliot Noss of Tucows made the point that resellers serve an important function in that they are typically hosting companies and ISPs, and as such, they tend to have established relationships with the registrants of domain names they resell. Resellers can focus their efforts on creating value-added tools that allow less-sophisticated consumers and small businesses to easily set up a website or an email address, without the overhead of running a registrar at the same time (which obviously requires a significant volume of registration business to justify the expense). No one disputes that resellers bring value to the marketplace. So when I ask whats wrong with resellers? it should not be interpreted as theres nothing right about resellers. But I see genuine problems every day with resellers, and by problems with resellers, I suppose I really mean, problems with registrars who use resellers, since the registrar is ultimately responsible for the registrations it places on the registry. So heres a short list of common problems I frequently see with (registrars who use) resellers: Because resellers often have relatively close relationships with their customers, their business operations sometimes suffer from what Id call trust me syndrome (TMS). TMS can manifest itself in the form of inadequate or nonexistent registration agreements, use of whois privacy services without disclosure to the customer (or without disclosure of the implications of using a privacy service), and internal transfer-out policies that are inconsistent with the Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy. Sometimes small resellers (e.g. where the customer service rep is also the president, CEO, treasurer, bookkeeper, janitor, etc.) take the business a little too personally. In the past, this has caused customers difficulty when they try to terminate the services of the reseller. Weve seen situations where this allegedly caused transfers to be NACKd without explanation and whois data to be altered without the customers consent. (While this is also a potential risk with registrars, it is less likely when the registrar actually values its continued accreditation. A small-time reseller can easily find a new host-registrar for whom it may resell names, so it may not place as much importance on the agreement it holds with its current host-registrar.) While every registrars reseller model is different, there are some models that delegate substantial responsibility to resellers, but not all resellers take their responsbilities as seriously as they should. By way of example, we saw an enormous uptick in complaints about resellers following VeriSigns migration to EPP in late 2006. In particular, customers complained that resellers wouldnt or couldnt provide auth-info codes for .com/.net names and that requests to the sponoring registrar were met with deflection of the matter to the unresponsive reseller. In some cases, even ICANNs attempts at intervention were similarly deflected. These broad points represent the majority of the reseller-related issues that we see. I welcome your thoughts about my thoughts and your suggestions for addressing the underlying problems. Ill share my ideas next week. Posted By : Mike Zupke April 18th, 2007 Danny comment: For those of you that have been unaware of this blog, earlier recent articles have included "Registrar Data Escrow draft specifications" (with a link to a document that reflects an initial attempt to specify the schedule, terms, and format registrars must use to escrow data pursuant to RAA paragraph 3.6.), "Transfer-Questions gets a ticketing system", and a RegisterFly update that revealed, among other problems, that Registerflys port 43 and web-based Whois services were not functioning, preventing use of FOAs for .com and .net names. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
I think this issue should be looked at and worthy of some attention, but I tend to lean toward the fact that it is mainly due to growing pains associated with the growth of the industry. The main problems I've had with registrars are the lack of timely attention to time-sensitive problems, their apparent abuse of the DNS at times, and monopolistic practices during transfer periods. Also, as a reseller, I am able to provide value-added services to my customers. Primarily, when they have a problem, they can call me - someone they know. Otherwise they may have to wait days for the registrar to walk them through a simple redirect issue. -Randy Glass A@L On 4/18/07, Danny Younger <dannyyounger@yahoo.com> wrote:
http://regbits.info/2007/04/18/whats-wrong-with-resellers/
At the Lisbon ICANN meeting, we saw the beginnings of a good community discussion about improving the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) in light of what we've learned from the problems exposed by the RegisterFly situation. Among several issues raised was the very evident friction between RegisterFly (as a reseller for eNom) and eNom, and the problems customers experienced as a result of the breakdown in the relationship.
In the public forum, Elliot Noss of Tucows made the point that resellers serve an important function in that they are typically hosting companies and ISPs, and as such, they tend to have established relationships with the registrants of domain names they resell. Resellers can focus their efforts on creating value-added tools that allow less-sophisticated consumers and small businesses to easily set up a website or an email address, without the overhead of running a registrar at the same time (which obviously requires a significant volume of registration business to justify the expense).
No one disputes that resellers bring value to the marketplace. So when I ask "what's wrong with resellers?" it should not be interpreted as "there's nothing right about resellers."
But I see genuine problems every day with resellers, and by problems with resellers, I suppose I really mean, problems with registrars who use resellers, since the registrar is ultimately responsible for the registrations it places on the registry.
So here's a short list of common problems I frequently see with (registrars who use) resellers:
Because resellers often have relatively close relationships with their customers, their business operations sometimes suffer from what I'd call "trust me syndrome" (TMS).
TMS can manifest itself in the form of inadequate or nonexistent registration agreements, use of whois privacy services without disclosure to the customer (or without disclosure of the implications of using a privacy service), and internal transfer-out policies that are inconsistent with the Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy.
Sometimes small resellers (e.g. where the customer service rep is also the president, CEO, treasurer, bookkeeper, janitor, etc.) take the business a little too personally. In the past, this has caused customers difficulty when they try to terminate the services of the reseller. We've seen situations where this allegedly caused transfers to be NACK'd without explanation and whois data to be altered without the customer's consent. (While this is also a potential risk with registrars, it is less likely when the registrar actually values its continued accreditation. A small-time reseller can easily find a new host-registrar for whom it may resell names, so it may not place as much importance on the agreement it holds with its current host-registrar.)
While every registrar's reseller model is different, there are some models that delegate substantial responsibility to resellers, but not all resellers take their responsbilities as seriously as they should.
By way of example, we saw an enormous uptick in complaints about resellers following VeriSign's migration to EPP in late 2006. In particular, customers complained that resellers wouldn't or couldn't provide auth-info codes for .com/.net names and that requests to the sponoring registrar were met with deflection of the matter to the unresponsive reseller. In some cases, even ICANN's attempts at intervention were similarly deflected.
These broad points represent the majority of the reseller-related issues that we see. I welcome your thoughts about my thoughts and your suggestions for addressing the underlying problems. I'll share my ideas next week.
Posted By : Mike Zupke April 18th, 2007
Danny comment: For those of you that have been unaware of this blog, earlier recent articles have included "Registrar Data Escrow draft specifications" (with a link to a document that reflects an initial attempt to specify the schedule, terms, and format registrars must use to escrow data pursuant to RAA paragraph 3.6.), "Transfer-Questions gets a ticketing system", and a RegisterFly update that revealed, among other problems, that Registerfly's port 43 and web-based Whois services were not functioning, preventing use of FOAs for .com and .net names.
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With regard to WHOIS, I don't see why someone can't maintain a real database with real data on the owner without making the information public for anyone to see. I don't know yet if there have been any examples of people using this data to wreak havoc, but I do know of situations where the data is mined and used for marketing purposes. While this doesn't seem like a big deal, I personally have picked up my mail to find a hundred or so 'Notices' from companies offering me some type of domain service. Thanks! Randy Glass A@L On 4/18/07, John L <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:
Where do users of cybercafes (those with email addresses or those without who just surf) fit in? Are each of these "individual users"
Sure. I don't see them as having interests significantly different from those of users who depend on an ISP for access and mail. Cybercafe users have little trouble setting up e-mail accounts on web mail providers, and all are at the mercy of their providers for their online identity.
in this scenario how in practice could you separate an Internet "user" from a member of the general public ...
In developed countries, you're right, they're approximately the same set of people.
Also what about those who use common Internet access points ...
Seems to me that the individuals are all the people using the access point. Same idea if they're using mobile phones, either their own phones or if they rent phones by the call from phone ladies in developing countries.
My sense is that the terminology that is being used here is highly culturally specific.
I don't intend for them to be culturally specific, and I hope we don't get bogged down in technical details in a vain attempt to map users to devices or IP addresses or e-mail addresses. Individual users are people. I am one user even though I use six different computers in a typical day, and if six people share a computer down the street or on the other side of the world, they are six users, not one.
I'm really glad that you brought up these scenarios, because these are exactly the users who are invisible in ICANN's debates. The WHOIS argument is a notable example -- many of the arguments advanced for WHOIS privacy are about people who want to register their own domains to host a web site to make political statements and want to avoid reprisals for those statements based on tracking them through their domain registration. While I believe that such people exist, they must be about 0.001% of the users in the developed world, and 0.00001% of the users in LDCs. I'd like to spend less time on technically appealing exotica and more on questions like how do you make e-mail work for legitimate individual users in west Africa when so much of the mail from that part of the world is sent by 419 criminals.
R's, John
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Draft Operating Principles: http://www.icannwiki.org/NA_RALO_OP
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RJGlass | America＠Large