[UA-discuss] UA and phishiness

paul at donuts.email paul at donuts.email
Wed May 2 16:59:23 UTC 2018


+1 Roberto
My opinion is that we should proactively endorse not blocking entire TLDs, and not be silent about it.  

Blocking an entire TLD does not get the TLD operator to change behavior (which is having extremely low pricing for new registrations) and harms the good registrants in that TLD.  Blocking specific names works because it effects the bad guys no matter what the TLD pricing is.
Abuse is extremely correlated in TLDs with very low (near zero) prices who therefore have to spend more on abuse/enforcement that their icann contracts require, but that tradeoff makes economic sense for them.  Those (low price and hence high % bad zone file TLDs) are then highlighted in the press as bad actors.  When a large zone file TLD has low new registration pricing the bad registrations are less of a percent of the zone so they are not highlighted in the press.  This is their (typically not new tld operators) competitive advantage which they totally utilize.  It lets them sometimes go to very low prices (such as what .com did in china a year+ ago) without the backlash in the press.  And they have another use for that advantage... 
What happens is competitive/economic forces (among TLD operators) kicks in and some TLD operators create and amplify FUD and negative perception which spills over to get IDN and other new TLDs indiscriminately blocked.  That harms the internet and is why i agree with Roberto - our policy should not be to endorse blocking entire tlds. Nor should we remain silent about it either because it effects UA.



Sent from my iPhone

> On May 2, 2018, at 8:00 AM, Andrew Sullivan <ajs at anvilwalrusden.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Wed, May 02, 2018 at 02:38:43PM +0000, Roberto Gaetano wrote:
>> Andrew,
>> I think that there is a major difference between the individual decision of an operator to block a whole TLD (as you rightfully point out, this is the internet so it is their choice) and the endorsement of this approach by bodies as the UASG.
> 
> Yep.
> 
>> If I remember correctly, your initial question was: “Does UASG have a view about this?”. The fact that some operators do block whole TLDs is what it is, a fact. That we endorse is as a policy, is a completely different matter.
>> Or am I missing something?
> 
> No, and it sounds like UASG does in fact have a view about it, from a
> meeting where I was not :)  But I haven't found it written down
> anywhere so I can point people at it.
> 
> A
> 
> -- 
> Andrew Sullivan
> ajs at anvilwalrusden.com


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