[NA-Discuss] a race to the bottom

[Danny Younger]

Correspondence from PIR's David Maher to Paul Twomey 

http://www.icann.org/correspondence/maher-to-twomey-07feb07.pdf

Dear Paul:

Last week I attended the North American
Registry/Registrar Regional Gathering in Santa Monica.
The ICANN staff deserves commendation for a wellrun
and informative meeting.

Stacy Burnette, in particular, gave a very well
organized and thoughtful presentation regarding the
new Compliance procedures for registrar (and
registry) contracts. She was impressive in fielding
some complex questions from the audience. At least
some of the questions showed an element of hostility
to ICANN's involvement in the area of compliance.

These questions, mostly from members of the registrar
constituency, raise some important issues about
ICANN's fulfillment of its mission.  Some registrars
appear to believe that ICANN should have only a very
limited role in setting standards for performance. 

One representative of the registrars suggested that,
in a free enterprise system, an accredited registrar
should be able to offer a low priced registration
service with minimal customer service. This
approach to registrar operations (even if registrants
are informed in advance about service standards) is
not consistent with ICANN's corporate purpose of
"promoting the global public interest in the
operational stability of the Internet."

I have always believed that serving the public
interest is an important element in the domain name
system, including the operations of registries and
registrars. Now that the Internet is the mass medium
of telecommunications, service in the public interest
takes on even greater importance. However, the
development of the secondary market in domain names
appears to have led some registrars to a view of their
role that sacrifices the public interest to their
economic interests. This is not conducive to the
operational stability of the Internet.

While I recognize that the registrar function is best
served by a competitive business model, the Internet
has become too important to all its users to allow
pure competition to set the standards for customer
service. Indeed, ICANN's definition of its
accreditation function for registrars recognizes that
"'Accredit' means to identify and set minimum
standards for the performance of registration
functions."

It is time to consider clarifying these minimum
standards. The discussion at the Regional Gathering,
and especially the questions raised during the
Compliance presentation, indicate that a race to the
bottom in service standards may well be under way.

I hope that ICANN will turn its attention to this
issue, and bring the concept of service to the public
interest back to the registration of domain names.


 
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