This summary covers the DNSO GA mailing list’s (and related) discussions and news between April 3, 2002, and April 9, 2002.
GA list archives are available online at [www.dnso.org].
Please feel free to forward this summary as you believe to be appropriate.
Topics
(i) RIR contracts. Jefsey Morfin forwarded a message from Ray Plzak of ARIN in which the RIRs make an assuring statement on the state of contract negotiations with ICANN, and indicate that “as a sign of good faith […] the RIRs will release one half of” the funds kept in escrow “to ICANN.” [www.dnso.org]
As an update to this, Bret Fausett’s icann.Blog points to a draft of a “Relationship Agreement”, which was posted on ICANN’s web site. [www.lextext.com]
(ii) Final statement of NAIS. Rob Courtney posted the NAIS group’s final statement to the GA list, which states that the group’s work is “largely complete.” [www.dnso.org]
(iii) Transfers. The Transfer Task Force’s work showed up in discussions at various points of time; I’ll restrict the summary to those postings which consisted of something else than rhetorics.
Danny Younger forwarded a message Patrick Mevzeck had sent to the registrars’ list. The message suggests that investigation of a subject’s “apparent authority” to initiate a domain transfer should be outsourced to some accredited provider – like what happens with UDRP as well. [www.dnso.org], [www.dnso.org], [www.dnso.org].
Joanna Lane suggested that the “bankruptcy clause” should be removed from the transfer policy, and that this should be an issue with which the transfer task force should deal. In a follow-up, William Walsh noted that “this issue is not the reason why the transfer task force was created.” He suggested that the bankruptcy clause “can wait.” Marilyn Cade suggested that Joanna should draft questions related to that issue for the transfer task force’s survey. [www.dnso.org], [www.dnso.org], [www.dnso.org].
(iv) NC teleconference on April 4. The agenda and the MP3 recording were posted. [www.dnso.org], [www.dnso.org].
(v) Skeleton structure. Alexander Svensson posted a skeleton structure. The document consists of two parts: “The first part is a hopefully less controversial layered skeleton structure. Additionally, there is a proposal on splitting responsibilities into three recognizable parts which separate budgets. Be prepared to like the first and dislike the second part or vice versa,” Alexander writes. [www.dnso.org]
(vi) Policy development. I posted a rough outline of a moderately modified task force process for policy development, which assumes that (a) membership is restricted to stakeholder representatives, but not names council members, and (b) uses staff instead of (naturally biased) volunteers for the chair’s and editor’s jobs. [www.dnso.org], [www.dnso.org]
Michael Froomkin responded that “the difficulty of doing this right is one of the most powerful arguments for decentralization and parallel processing. ICANN’s sole job would be to prevent inconsistent outcomes […].” [www.dnso.org]
Danny Younger suggested not to use task forces, and rely on the work of WG-D instead. [www.dnso.org], [www.dnso.org]
In order to bring more structure into that debate, I also posted a rough list of parameters for policy making. Alexander Svensson and others added various comments, and pros and cons. A summary of some of these is available as a large table ([does-not-exist.org]). [www.dnso.org], [www.dnso.org].
Part of the discussion also covered the question what size a working group or task force can realistically have, while still working. Alexander argued that his “personal impression is that the maximum size for such a group is somewhere at 15 or 20 persons, regardless of the tools used.” [www.dnso.org].
(vii) Reseller/registrar (mis-)behavior and ICANN mission. Danny Younger forwarded a message on a reseller causing massive SPAM. He concludes that “if registrars take no action to police their own industry, and if they are not held accountable for the actions of their re-sellers, then this industry is surely begging for the same type of governmental intervention that impacted the telecommunications industry.” Danny’s suggestion is that ICANN should help to bring “resellers acting as loose cannons” “under control.” [www.dnso.org]
There were several posters who disagreed, and argued that anticompetitive and illegal behavior of resellers and registrars should be left to traditional authorities which are already responsible for dealing with it. [www.dnso.org], [www.dnso.org], [www.dnso.org].
No Such Weblog 