[atlarge-discuss] Products for Shanghai

[DannyYounger@cs.com]

Hans,

Re:  http://www.fitug.de/atlarge-panel/0210/msg00170.html
In response to your request for a 1-page analysis of a relevant issue, I have 
taken the liberty of preparing a preliminary issue brief for consideration:


Resellers as a Source of Registrant Confusion

At the November 2001 Marina del Rey Names Council session a representative of 
the Business Constituency remarked that fully 70% of all domain name 
registrants may be unaware of who their registrars are (owing in great 
measure to the rapid proliferation of ISPs and other resellers that provide 
registration services), and it may now be noted that the consequences of this 
consumer confusion have already begun to deleteriously affect the entirety of 
the domain name industry -- as such, this is a matter which should be of 
concern to the ICANN Board.  

At issue is the rampant confusion ultimately made visibly manifest through 
the transfer of sponsorship process.  When a registrant decides to take 
advantage of lower domain name pricing made possible via ICANN's efforts to 
enhance competition at the registrar level, such a registrant will 
predictably attempt to transfer his existing registration to another sponsor 
at the conclusion of the registration period.  Invariably, these registrants 
will then receive correspondence from an entity with whom they have had no 
other prior contact (their own losing registrar) and either don't know how to 
respond to the letter, or will ignore the letter as another piece of daily 
junk mail.  Often this confusion then results in the subsequent denial of the 
transfer request by those registrars that adhere to a NACK policy, and this 
in turn serves to make a bad situation even worse by facilitating the 
development of an unnecessary acrimony between these registrants and the 
respective registrars.  Those registrants held hostage by this process 
accordingly begin to reevaluate the desirability of maintaining domain names, 
and the regular and steady shrinkage in the CNO bears testimony to the 
private response of the registrant community to this ongoing abusive 
situation.

Sixteen months ago, a representative of the Enom registrar made the following 
comment:  "I believe that in this extremely competitive situation we find 
ourselves in, some of us are trying to protect our market shares by "making 
sure" the registrant really wishes to leave, and inadvertently, by making it 
more difficult for the registrants to switch, these registrars may be 
reinforcing the willingness of the registrants to switch. A terrible spiral 
consisting of an increasing desire to switch and an increasing difficulty to 
switch increasingly exasperates and frustrates all of our customers."
http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/registrars/Arc01/msg00653.html

To end this vicious cycle which has become only worse over the course of 
time, direct action by the ICANN Board is required.  In addition to 
considering the recommendations soon to be offered by the Names Council 
Transfers Task Force, it would be prudent for the Board to consider measures 
that would enable registrants to readily know who their registrar-of-record 
actually is -- such measures would go a long way toward reducing potential 
registrant confusion.  There are at present domain name resellers that don't 
even cite the name of the ICANN accredited registrar in their Terms of 
Service contract, but this situation is a matter that can be readily 
rectified by Board action.  Just as registrars are bound by contract to 
ICANN, so too can resellers be bound to contractual requirements which would 
force them, at the very least, to clearly identify to the registrant the 
ICANN accredited registrar responsible for their domain name sponsorship.   







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