On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 10:24 PM, Eric Brunner-Williams <brunner@nic-naa.net> wrote:
On 1/2/10 11:38 PM, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:
... it would be interesting if some process were developed to deaccredit or otherwise kill off the shell registrars
Suresh, Why?
My comment was more in the context of this thread's original topic - killing off bogus spam / botnet operations that become registrars (and/or registrar resellers) who buy an outsourced instance of one of the "registrar in a box" services, and are immediately in business. Though, you might want to prevent shell registrars for the same reasons that auctions try to weed out shill bidders. And while it is a rational economic idea for a bidder to game an auction by setting up shills, the auctioneer and the other bidders lose out in the end.
Now, shell registrars are a pain in the ass, not for operational reasons, but because every time someone wants to say something stupid and get away with it they say "<some large number> of registrars".
That too of course. Reminds you of Tammanny Hall sometimes? :)
Shell registrars are not, generally, the source of primary registrations of arbitrarily abusive intent. That problem lies elsewhere and is adequately documented.
Wasn't talking about shell entities setup by various registrars for drop catching and such. Though as I pointed out, those could be weeded out for fairly sensible economic reasons, for the same reasons such practices are discouraged in elections, auctions, rationing systems (like the depression era / WW-II food stamps system) etc. Was talking about totally bogus registrars that are "spammer sets up an LLC, said LLC submits all the paperwork to become a registrar, rents an instance of a DIY registrar service .. and starts doing roaring business with just one customer - the spammer) --srs