[registrars] Proposed short term solution to registry contention

[Bruce Tonkin]

Hello Paul,

> 
> 1) What happens to the funds in the escrow account that are 
> over and above the $6 the registry gets?  This would be a 
> huge number pretty quickly. 
> 1a) Do registrants get a cut?  (if so how does it flow to them?)
> 1b) ICANN? 
> 1c) Registrars? (if so in what proportion, or based on what, and why?)

Well this is the real interesting question.  One of the questions is
whether once the name has been cancelled whether the registrar (and the
associated original registrant) have any claim to a share of the funds
from the name being re-registered.    The simple answer is no, but it
would certainly provide an incentive for names to be returned to the
pool (rather than sold before being cancelled) if funds were returned to
the cancelling registrar.    If funds were returned to the original
registrar, then I would leave it to that registrar to decide how to
return any funds to the registrant (ie leave this to market forces).
As a registrar I would certainly like to receive a percentage of the
funds, but not sure if the rest of the ICANN community would agree with
this.

I suggest that the excess funds mostly go to ICANN, but in the following
way:
- first allocated to meet the operational budget for ICANN as approved
each year
- remaining funds be available to assist developing countries to
establish appropriate DNS infrastructure for their cctlds, or major
infrastructure projects such as establishing DNSSEC at the root and
generally increasing capacity at the root

Ultimately this will remove the per transaction fee currently charged to
registrars, and also help reduce the pressure on ICANN from countries
that feel dis-enfranchised by the growth of the Internet.

I would see that registrars would mostly receive additional revenue
through charging brokerage fees (e.g percentage of the sale transaction,
instead of purely a fixed price) on the purchase of a deleted name.




> 
> 2) What happens if some registrars decide not to participate 
> and do the NSI/Tucows model unilaterally? In effect 
> pre-empting whatever the registry does? 

There is nothing that can be done to stop this.  Registrants have always
been able to sell names, and there have always been companies around
that have facilitated these transactions.

I would not attempt to interfere in the market for such names at all.

I am purely looking at how to resolve contention at the registry level.

Many models can exist for an individual registrant to sell their name.


> 
> 3) What happens in the meantime?
> 
> It may turn out that one system is the best, but I'm not sure 
> we can just "jump to the end".  What if we are wrong again?

I would first like to resolve the contention problem.  This solution can
be improved iteratively.    Given the funding issue will be complex, I
have proposed a simple first step which will solve the technical problem
but not the revenue model.

> 
> I support the "ratio" model, not only because I know it will 
> efficiently fix the "tragedy of the commons" problem now, but 
> also because once that is in place, the market can calmly and 
> prudently take care of the rest, including consumers.  

I think the ratio problem is a better way to solve the problem of
different registrars having different volumes of traffic where there is
no contention involved.  E.g a large registrar has many more renewal and
modify transactions to process than a small registrar, and needs
sufficient bandwidth for those transactions.

Again there are two problems to solve here, and I would like to see us
solve each problem separately.  The contention problem is the bigger
problem right now.  

Regards,
Bruce