[At-Large] [ALAC] Fwd: A million domains taken down by email checks

[Kerry Brown]

I can speak from the end user point of view on this issue. As a consultant to small businesses I have seen several clients suffer business hardship because of this issue (invalid contact email). It is not uncommon for a small business owner to not want to deal with "the internet". They hire someone to get them "the internet". This usually means a domain, a web site, email, etc. Someone sells them a package that includes all this. Often the contact email will be the person that sells them the package. Some of these resellers are unscrupulous, some are just incompetent, some for whatever reason leave the business. The domain may not even be registered in the small business name but in the name of the reseller who has disappeared. When the domain goes dark the business loses email, their website, and possibly more. By the time the small business owner contacts someone like me to fix their internet a few weeks to a month may have gone by. Small business owners are busy running the day to day things and thought they had "the internet" covered, after all they have been paying someone to deal with it. By the time they figure out they don't have someone to deal with it and find someone who will they may have lost the domain. There is almost aways a charge from the registrar to reinstate the domain. They have not had email or a web site for long enough that it has cost them business. They end up with a very sour taste for "the internet" and the people that "run" it. They equate internet governance with the people that run the internet. They have no idea how things happen so they they are on "the internet". They mostly think of Al Gore when they even think about how the internet works. We who have built this ecosystem have not built it for people that are not intimately involved in it. It is up to us to fix it. We can't simply blame registrants.

Kerry Brown

________________________________________
From: at-large-bounces at atlarge-lists.icann.org <at-large-bounces at atlarge-lists.icann.org> on behalf of Evan Leibovitch <evan at telly.org>
Sent: Sunday, July 6, 2014 10:42 AM
To: Alan Greenberg
Cc: ICANN ALAC list; ICANN At-Large list
Subject: Re: [At-Large] [ALAC] Fwd: A million domains taken down by email       checks

Agreed.

As I said in my earlier message, if this is an implementation issue -- such
as too short a wait time or other matters of mechanics -- it can be easily
fixed. The policy goal behind the action remains sound.

The method by with which the matter has been brought to the rest of the
ICANN community, along with the accompanying sense of alarm, indicates a
broader and opportunistic agenda. (ie, the consistent attachment of
references to demands from "law enforfcement").

Those who have been running to the media and ICANN senior staff on the
issue seem to have little interest in the very real nuances you describe,
because it couldn't then be over-dramatized.

- Evan
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