[gnso-rpm-wg] A Brave New World Without Sunrises or the TMCH

George Kirikos icann at leap.com
Fri Apr 14 19:25:27 UTC 2017


Hello,

On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 1:15 PM,  <policy at paulmcgrady.com> wrote:
> I will have to say "no thanks" to dismantling the RPMs so that they can be
> reassembled to ensure that every Sunrise is an auction-based dollar squeeze
> of brand owners.  I understand certain registries may be unhappy with how
> few Sunrise registrations trademark owners bought in the first round as many
> were financially dependent on trademark owners showing up to purchase them
> (even though we all warned applicants not to count on it).

I'm not a registry, nor am I associated with any. As I've said, I have
no interest at all in registering new gTLDs. If I was to act in my own
personal interests, I'd say "keep the status quo", since the status
quo has helped kill new gTLDs (i.e. .com has thrived). It would be
hard to design a worse new gTLD program than exists at present.

> I was secretly hoping that the "dismantle the RPMs" campaign had some
> free-speech motivation that, after several weeks, had yet to locate its
> rationale.   Clearly, this is just about money for certain registry
> operators (its almost always about money...sigh).  One good thing - at least
> the free speech-ish veneer is gone.

See above. In a capitalist society, once the "first dibs" is
eliminated by killing sunrise, and it's straight to land rush, then
willingness to pay (auction) is an entirely fair method to allocate a
scarce resource.

If a registry operator wanted to set a $1 billion/domain price in
sunrise, that would be a quite effective method of eliminating the
negative effects of sunrises, a legal way to comply with their
obligations to ICANN (while thumbing their noses at the bad policy).
If I was running a registry, and wanted to promote registrant-friendly
policies that reduce gaming, that's exactly what I would do, to
eliminate the inherent unfairness and gaming. Let folks with real
disputes solve it in court or UDRP or whatever, post-registration.

Sincerely,

George Kirikos
416-588-0269
http://www.leap.com/


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