[NA-Discuss] registrant advisory committee

[Evan Leibovitch]

Hello all,

So far as I can tell, registrants are already 'represented'  by two
existing ICANN constituencies;
for-profits through the Business Constituency and non-profits through
NCUC. Certainly, looking through things such as the two above groups'
responses to the Domain Tasting issue, they certainly took the point of
view of those two groups.

This means, the remaining "unrepresented" group is the that of
"individual" registrants, who probably don't share much interest in
common with those who -- to use ICANN lingo -- "monetize" domains
through a number of tactics, many of which do no serve the public good.

I've certainly taken to heart comments about mission bloat of ICANN and,
indeed, general bloat. Could it not be said that the interest-group of
"individual registrants is, indeed, a subgroup of At-Large that shares
most of ALAC's interests but has some additional ones of its own? Is
this group -- which probably represents a single-digit percentage of
total domain registrations -- really in need of a whole separate ICANN
infrastructure?

I'd like to offer a counter-proposal to Danny's, one that's easier to
implement and serves a wider audience. It'd like to suggest a permanent
Working Group of ALAC devoted to registrant issues, led by Danny. That
could be implemented quickly, and provide a source for policy and
resources that could be very valuable to the whole community, including
Internet users who are potential registrants. While not everyone in the
world cares about Registerfly, ALAC _should_ care about the manner in
which non-corporate registrants are treated by all registrars and
registries be the gTLDs or ccTLDs. Personal registrants probably domain
tasting, while corporate registrants are -- almost by definition -- the
only group that would prefer retaining the practice.

Anyway, I'll suggest that as something to consider.

- Evan