[gnso-rpm-wg] 99%+ reduction in sunrise utilization rate per TLD supports EFF call for elimination of sunrise

Fri Aug 11 13:12:47 UTC 2017

‎I was not going to engage in yet more back and forth on sunrise, but in reading your email, and those of several others, I feel compelled to say something on this by the numbers discussion.  This type of metric driven approach is very much akin to driving down a road with blinders on either side. It's a tad pedantic and as we know from history these types of approaches (many times pushed by bureaucrats) can often lead to disastrous decisions (e.g. Soviet style five year plans). You need to look at the overall situation and what is going on, as opposed to just getting caught up in the numbers -- which after all can get sliced and diced any number of ways. The reality is that brand owners are using  sunrise to protect their brands in the key extensions that relate to their businesses. The numbers may not be huge per se, but the new gTLD program has pretty much, by all accounts, not been the success that ICANN had hoped for. Moreover, we all know that the success of the extensions has been quite uneven. Some are barely breaking even, some have been a great success, others have failed and yet others have only experienced lackluster results. What all of this means is that some extensions are simply not worth registering in.

That being said, sunrise does have an important value. If there are up to 100,000 plus registrations based on bona fide brands, and some on the most valuable brands in the world, then the system is working as it is preventing a significant amount of cybersquatting .  If we go by he metrics you love, then it is not rocket science to figure out that a landrush approach is going to lead to a large spike of abuse (as we have seen in the past in no sunrise situations). This  in turn leads to significant costs of investigating and pursuing infringements, all of which ultimately leads to more costs to consumers and  loss of faith in the integrity of the system -- particularly if consumers get tricked or defrauded by a domain name that appears to be related to a brand (e.g., Gucci.shoes) and which could have been registered during a sunrise period.

So while I understand that brand owners are not making sunrise registrations across 1000 plus extensions, the point is that they are generally picking the most logical extensions and are not abusing the sunrise system. So whether the number is one percent or less or ten percent, that number doesn't really  tell the story. 100,000 plus sunrise registrations prevents a ton of abuse, which benefits everyone in the end. The numbers only approach really misses the mark. It's like saying that if a disease affects less that 1% of the world population, we should not waste money on finding a cure for it and stop all funding on such research (even though the costs of treating the disease for the less than 1% will be staggeringly high).

So in closing, I again urge you to concentrate on trying to find a fix to address the limited speculator issue as opposed to beating a dead horse on the sunrise issue.

‎
  Original Message
From: George Kirikos
Sent: Friday, August 11, 2017 12:22 AM
To: gnso-rpm-wg
Subject: Re: [gnso-rpm-wg] 99%+ reduction in sunrise utilization rate per TLD supports EFF call for elimination of sunrise

Hello,

On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 11:21 PM, Greg Shatan <gregshatanipc at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't see the math that created your "talking point" of a "99%+ reduction
> in sunrise." Can you show your work please?

The post at:

http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/gnso-rpm-wg/2017-August/002321.html

showed numerous sunrise statistics, ranging from 15,000 on the low end
for .mobi (.co was slightly lower, although that's a ccTLD, not a TLD
that ICANN is involved with in any way), 32,000 for .asia, 80,000 for
.biz/.xxx, and who knows what it was for .info?

Even taking the lowest of those (15,000) as the base, 130 (average
new gTLD sunrise from The Analysis Group report) divided by 15,000 =
0.0087 = 0.87%, which is less than 1%, i.e. a 99%+ reduction. Of
course, if one chose a higher base (.asia, .xxx, .biz, .etc.), or an
average of those other sunrises, the reduction is even greater than if
one had used the lowest sunrise (from .mobi).

As for your other statement:

>We can't expect Sunrise registrations to outperform the New gTLD Program generally."

While the new gTLD program has been a disaster, it hasn't been an
underperformance of 99%+ of expectations (perhaps more like 80% to 90%
underperformance). Thus, while it's obvious that both have been
failures, sunrise usage is an even greater failure than new gTLDs
overall. So, even on that relative scale, the sunrise period should be
eliminated.

Since I know you'll ask "George, why do you say there's been an 80% or
90% underpeformance for new gTLDs?" let me answer that now to save
time. I'll use as my reference (besides the obvious general
observations of most informed observers) ICANN's own stats:

http://domainincite.com/18857-new-gtld-sales-miss-icann-estimates-by-a-mile

where the numbers came in at just 18% of ICANN's original 2014
expectations. For the math-challenged, 100% - 18% = 82% as the level
of underperformance.

Sincerely,

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