[NA-Discuss] Pre-registration statement and ALAC - update

[Evan Leibovitch]

Hello all,

As previously mentioned, the reason that the issue was not brought up at the
last ALAC meeting was because the meeting ran out of time, not because the
NA members of ALAC opposed it.

Today I raised and spoke in favour of the issue at a meeting of the ALAC
executive committee, where the issue did receive ample time for discussion.

I received significant push-back on perception of pre-registration as a
matter of consumer (in this case, registrant) confusion or fraud. Generally
the perception from others is that if a service does not collect any money
until it is capable of delivering a domain, it fails a legal test of fraud
in most jurisdictions. Furthermore, some actually saw pre-registration as a
legitimate service, akin to paying someone to stand in line for you in a
queue for concert tickets. So long as the service provider does not
misrepresent what they are doing and does not try to identify as registry or
registrar, not everyone believes that the service is deserving of regulation
or even consumer warnings.

In any case, I come back to NARALO with the following comments and
suggestions:

   - The matter may be certainly put in front of the whole ALAC, but if it
   does we should expect similar or even stronger pushback. Someone with either
   a deeper understanding and/or more passion on the matter than I would be
   required at a meeting to sufficiently navigate the questions and objections
   that we now know will come

   - Earlier in these email threads was mention that the proposal was
   received favourably by LACRALO. I was informed today in specific terms that
   this was not the case.

   - It might be necessary to consider that this may be a regional
   statement, adopted by us and maybe a few other regions -- but not all of
   them. We need to know from staff how the RALOs may distribute policy
   statements that have regional but not global endorsement ... I don't recall
   if that has happened before It may be reasonable to ask ALAC to forward the
   NARALO position through its communications channels without officially
   endorsing it -- but that would require a specific, tightly worded statement.

   - It may be worthwhile finding out if any constituencies of the
   non-contracted hours of GNSO would support the NARALO position

- Evan