[ga] Responsiveness and Standards

["Richard Henderson" <richardhenderson@ntlworld.com>]

>From an Internet User point of view, there is also an extremely strong case
for mandatory minimum standards for registrars, with loss of
ICANN-accreditation
status for non-compliance. The trouble with "best practices" (which ICANN
already sets out for registrars) is that they are not enforced... the whole
thing is self-regulated... as a result, the 'good' registrars try to work to
best practices and the cowboy firms just ignore them. ICANN does not enforce
its advised "best practices".

What's needed is teeth in the Registry and Registrar Agreements. Clear and
defined sanctions. The right to trade in the people's DNS should only be
granted and maintained if companies are prepared to comply with mandatory
standards and rules. Don't comply? Then they lose their right to trade with
'our' (the world's) DNS. Life is full of decisions. People playing in the
DNS
Supply Industry should have to accept choices to. Accept enforced rules, or
go
sell donuts.

The trouble is, ICANN doesn't see it as the world's DNS. To them the DNS is
a profit-making commodity which 'insiders' exist to benefit from...

If mandatory standards were written into contracts / agreements, then the
Internet User would benefit and it might pre-empt all kinds of rogue
activity...

Like the registrars who committed fraud in the .info roll-out   ...  or the
registrars who warehoused domains in the .biz rollout, using their
registrar's advantage to submit short lists to the round-robin in order to
queue jump.

Ask yourself:

.info roll-out... who got domain.info? who got domains.info?

Answer:

Well ask the Directors of Afilias, because their Registrars got them... how
was domains.info got... by submitting a short queue which bucked the
system...
or to be more precise, the system was set up to be bucked...

And ask Signature Domains who got key names in the .biz roll out by
submitting a minute queue only for their own Partner...

Is the DNS for the insiders in the supply industry, or for the world and
ordinary Internet Users?

I'd like to know precise answers from ICANN to precise questions, and
implicit
in the questions is the concern that ICANN 'turns a blind eye' as long as
the
registrars keep paying them...  but over a year after asking Dan
Halloran (ICANN's Registrar Liaison) I've had no reply. Asked Paul Twomey if
I could have a response from Dan, and Paul hasn't responded either...

ICANN shows no serious commitment to ordinary Internet Users, and I fear
"best practices" will be little more than a mantra, unless they are
mandatory and punitive.

We need a User Watchdog which is independent of ICANN
(and not the ALAC poodle) in order to fight for the rights and interest of
Ordinary Users... and I guess that is probably why ICANN is so intent on
keeping
the Elected Users out of their Board Room and keeping the At Large at arm's
length,
through the labyrinths of their processes, and layer upon layer upon layer
of delegated
or nominated unaccountable entities... and then, if you *do* ask direct and
challenging
questions, they can just *ignore* the questions and never even acknowledge
them...
I'm still waiting for Dan and Paul, but for all DoC's spin about
'responsiveness'
and Paul's words about responsiveness... there is...

no response

yrs,

Richard Henderson
Icann At Large Member
UK Region

(PS: I notice that .au sets mandatory limits to the period consumers have to
wait for a response
to their correspondence. I feel that 380 days is rather on the long side to
wait for a response...)

----- Original Message -----
From: <DannyYounger@cs.com>
To: <atlarge-discuss@lists.fitug.de>
Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2003 5:19 AM
Subject: [atlarge-discuss] An opportunity to help


> On May 23, a Mr. Al Bode wrote a letter and posted it to the ALAC forum --
> http://forum.icann.org/alac-forum/domain/msg00000.html
>
> No one on the ALAC has even noticed this letter.  Mr. Bode's problem deals
> with hosting companies that list themselves as the
registrant/administrative
> contact when registering domain names for clients of their hosting
services.
> When these Hosting/ISP entities go bankrupt, it poses a problem for those
> individuals that paid for rights to the domains but now are faced with a
registrar
> that won't respond to their needs (as registrars will cite ICANN rules
that
> disallow namespace changes if such modifications are not authorized by the
> registrant and/or administrative contact).
>
> This particular practice is common in the hosting community worldwide, and
> affects a substantial number of registrants (many of whom aren't educated
with
> regard to the finer points of DNS registration services) as a fair number
of
> ISPs go out of business on a regular basis.
>
> If the ALAC won't communicate with Mr. Bode, perhaps the members of
> icannatlarge can act to help solve this vexing problem by bringing the
issue to the
> attention of the ICANN Board.  What is probably called for is the
development of
> a set of "Best Practices for ISPs" that has the blessing of ICANN's ISP
> Constituency.  It might also be wise for ICANN to survey the ISP Community
to
> determine the magnitude of the problem (most especially in the developing
world).
>
> Here is an opportunity to help.  How will this organization act to address
> this challenge?

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