I slogged through it so you don't have to -- ICANN Vertical Integration WG for dummies

Mon Jul 26 23:37:02 UTC 2010

On 7/26/10 7:11 PM, Franck Martin wrote:
> The question too, is which model is mitigating the best the presence of rogue registrars (like domain tasting registrars, etc..)

Franck,

First, tasting is only a part of the extensions from the registrant 
serving business model that ICANN explicitly allows, due in part to 
the advocacy by Professor Mueller and others circa 1999 that ICANN has 
no business in determining business models.

So rather than characterize registrars who used the Add Grace Period 
for purposes of acquiring domains with "natural traffic" under a PPC 
business model as "rogue", you might consider whether Google 
primarily, but not exclusively, and ICANN, created the system whereby 
"natural traffic" in the .com namespace could be monitized by exploits 
of the AGP.

That particular problem has been resolved, but the rest of the ecology 
of "upstream" and "backorder" is untouched.

But assuming that "rogue registrars" is a useful tool (and I encourage 
you and anyone else interested in registrars to review the 900 or so 
ICANN accreditations and observe the marvelous ownerships of Enom, 
Snapname, Directi and Dotster, and those are simply for the 
aftermarket (drop pool) for expired names), and "tasting" is a useful 
referent (both of which I think miss the central issues), then the 
model question is well posed.

In what follows, "ROI" refers to return on investment for bad acts.

The 15% cap proponents think that structural separation removes the 
ROI incentive.

The integration proponents think that (jn2) compliance will remove the 
ROI incentive, and (freetrade) that ROI will not incent, so compliance 
is unnecessary.

The competition authority proponents think that ROI is irrelevant.

So yeah, pick your model. Pick with care.

Eric