On 7/26/10 7:11 PM, Franck Martin wrote:
The question too, is which model is mitigating the best the presence of rogue registrars (like domain tasting registrars, etc..)
Franck, First, tasting is only a part of the extensions from the registrant serving business model that ICANN explicitly allows, due in part to the advocacy by Professor Mueller and others circa 1999 that ICANN has no business in determining business models. So rather than characterize registrars who used the Add Grace Period for purposes of acquiring domains with "natural traffic" under a PPC business model as "rogue", you might consider whether Google primarily, but not exclusively, and ICANN, created the system whereby "natural traffic" in the .com namespace could be monitized by exploits of the AGP. That particular problem has been resolved, but the rest of the ecology of "upstream" and "backorder" is untouched. But assuming that "rogue registrars" is a useful tool (and I encourage you and anyone else interested in registrars to review the 900 or so ICANN accreditations and observe the marvelous ownerships of Enom, Snapname, Directi and Dotster, and those are simply for the aftermarket (drop pool) for expired names), and "tasting" is a useful referent (both of which I think miss the central issues), then the model question is well posed. In what follows, "ROI" refers to return on investment for bad acts. The 15% cap proponents think that structural separation removes the ROI incentive. The integration proponents think that (jn2) compliance will remove the ROI incentive, and (freetrade) that ROI will not incent, so compliance is unnecessary. The competition authority proponents think that ROI is irrelevant. So yeah, pick your model. Pick with care. Eric