TRANSFER TASK FORCE
TELECONFERENCE
April 10, 2002 at 11:15 EST
>
"ccTLD - Rick Shera" <Rick.Shera@internetnz.net.nz>
"ISP - Mark McFadden" <mcf@uwm.edu>
"IPC - Nick Wood" <nick.wood@nom-iq.com>
"BC - Marilyn Cade" <mcade@att.com>
"BC - Grant Forsyth" <grant.forsyth@clear.co.nz>
"Registrars - Ross Wm. Rader"
<ross@tucows.com
"gTLD
- Sloan Gaon" <sgaon@register.com>
"gTLD - Christine Russo" <crusso@verisign.com>
David Safran <dsafran@nixonpeabody.com>
GA Chair -
Thomas Roesssler roessler@does-not-exist.org/
ICANN – Dan
Hollaran
GA
representative - Dan Steinberg <synthesis@videotron.ca>
"DNSO Sec - Glen de Saint Géry" <gcore@wanadoo.fr>
Executive assistant Marilyn Cade – Marie Juliano – mjuliano@att.com
Marilyn
Cade went through the agenda items to be discussed:
.Marilyn Cade introduced the two invited guests, Thomas Roessler and Dan
Hollaran, who were asked to join for their expertise on the survey.
Thomas Roessler made the following contribution:
I. Survey
Design
- Basic principle: Avoid free-form, use multiple-choice. Make sure
you get a survey which doesn't cost you months to evaluate.
- Keep wording simple and understandable. Make sure that choices
are clear, and mutually exclusive (where necessary).
- Free-form is fine in order to gather some nuggets, but not in
order to gather "hard facts".
- Ross Rader suggested to give an e-mail address for comments
instead of providing comment space on the survey form. I
didn't
make that remark during the call, but I think the idea is
excellent: It adds an additional burden to the respondent,
so we
may hope that only those who really have something interesting to
tell will make use of that option. I'd expect few, but
quality
responses.
- Some answers will have to be broken down by the registrar used.
Implementation: Ask for registrar(s) first, then produce
form where
registrar names are already filled in, and present this form to
respondent.
Problem: Many users may not know which registrar they are using.
- Christine Russo suggested to also ask about specific policies
(auto-ack, auto-nack, asking for confirmation, ...). Please
note
that this is complementary to asking for experience. Things
which may sound good in theory may work out badly in practice.
- In connection with the question about which policies registrants
are talking, it was suggested (not by me) to ask for _recent_
experiences. I believe that this is a very good idea.
II. Registrars' statistics
- I suggested to use registrars statistics in order to understand
what kinds of respondents we have. In particular, statistics
on
failed and successful transfers, and on the reasons why transfers
were rejected, may help to detect anomalies among respondents.
This may help in order to detect large amounts of fraudulent
responses; note, however, that I'm not entirely convinced myself
that this will be entirely successful. It may still be worth
a
try.
- What would be even more interesting would be the development of
transfer statistics over time: If my guess is right, the
number
of transfers per day (or week) will be a rather smooth curve,
with bumps happening at the point of time of policy changes.
Comparing the effect of policy changes on such statistics as
failed transfers, complaints about fraud, and the like, may help
the task force when it tries to understand the impact some of the
policy changes actually have had. Note that this kind of
approach would require quite a bit of data. Just snapshots
would
most likely not be enough.
Once again, this is just a suggestion. Feel free not to
implement
it, in particular if you believe that the cost involved would not
be justified by the possible impact on policy development.
III. Some suggestions for specific questions.
Here are some suggestions for specific questions which could be
asked. Note that I have formatted them with just a single answer,
for the sake of simplicity. In a final questionnaire, I'd imagine
that these would be treated like the "number of attempts" example I
gave in the edits to the draft which were posted to this list.
- Have any requests for transfer you made been turned down? If so,
what reasons were given?
[] Dispute Resolution Policy [what precisely is stated
there?]
[] Pending bankruptcy of the SLD Holder
[] Dispute over the identity of the SLD Holder
[] Request to transfer occured within the first 60 days after the
initial registration with the Registrar
[] Domain was in unpaid status
[] Other:
This is Exhibit B + unpaid, which are, according to my recollection,
the most frequent reasons mentioned in the complaints posted to
various mailing lists.
- (Replacement for q. 11a; choices need additional work.) If the
losing registrar contacted you about a transfer request you made,
what information did their message contain?
[] Advertising material on the losing registrar's services.
[] Renewal instructions.
[] Instructions on how to complete the transfer.
[] An indication why they contacted you instead of completing the
transfer.
[] Other:
(Anything else?)
- If the message you received contained instructions on how to
complete the transfer, were these instructions comprehensible,
accessible, and complete?
[] Yes
[] No
- If both renewal and transfer instructions were given, which
instructions were more comprehensible, accessible, and complete?
[] Both were equally comprehensible, accessible, and complete.
[] Transfer instructions were more comprehensible, ...
[] Renewal instructions were more comprehensible, ...
- How much time did you have to complete the transfer after receipt
of the message from the losing registrar?
[] 1 ... 5 days
- If the losing registrar contacted you about a transfer request you
made, and you fulfilled any steps you were asked to perform in
order to complete the transfer in a timely manner, did the
transfer succeed?
[] Yes
[] No
- What reason, if any, did the losing registrar give for contacting
you about your transfer request?
[options TBD]
Dan Hollaran echoed what Thomas said insisted on simplicity, easiness
and briefness.
Marilyn
Cade:
Stated the
need for two separate surveys:
Broad base
of respondents was clarified by explaining that it was reaching out but that in
the ISP community there would be a difference between the intermediary and
individual respondents.
A
manageable mechanism to avoid abuse should be studied which may include looking
at stats on successful and unsuccessful transfers.
Christine
Russo showed
concern that fraudulent transfers had not been taken into consideration. This could be captured under loosing domains.
While the
difficulties attached to free form questions were recognised it was felt that
there should be a channel for free form comment.
Marilyn
Cade asked Dan
Hollaran if there are statistics on the complaints?
The
Registrar involved is notified and the Registrars constituency was collecting
complaints.
Christine
Russo commented
that the focus should not be on policy but rather gathering actual experience.
Mark Mc
Fadden made the
following points:
The constituency is supportive of 2 surveys.
Marilyn Cade in summary:
There was general support for:
law firms
paralegals
agents who encroach on process
but don’t do it themselves
Insisted
that the purpose of the survey was to collect enough data to make meaningful
recommendations.
Large
Registrars should have the ability to measure transfer requests.
Not all
transfers are failures.
Transfers
can be due to computer problems.
There are
two facets of transfers:
Ross
Rader suggested
that this was possible
Thomas
Roessler said that
it would be interesting to find out how different policies affected the
transfers
Christine
Russo felt that
Registrars would be hesitant to give statisrics and numbers as fraudulent
transfers do occur.
Marilyn reminded the group that the survey
would not be statistically valid, it set out to find policy implications.
The
complaints ICANN received would be
examined.
Ross
Rader gave an
overview of the document - A basis of proposal for Best practices
outlining technical and operational processes for gaining and loosing
Registrars that allows Registrars to do transfers.
It was the
work of several Registrars, Tucows, Nominet
over a 6 month period. And was adopted unanimously by the registrar
Constituency membership last September (2001).
The aim is
to incorporate it into the Registrars agreement.
Asked how
it would fit in with the intermediaries and with apparent authority.
Ross
answered that the process only cares about the relevance to the tran,saction.
Marilyn
Cade suggested that
in the next call policy recommendation must be discussed and that anyone who
had recommendations should come forward with them before the next call so that
there can be a specific discussion.
It was
Christine Russo’s opinion that policy changes should be reserved till out reach
has been done, however Marilyn reiterated that there should be a concurrent
discussion process while the survey is taking place.
It is
important that there be no piecemeal
approach to the Names Council,
Assignments:
Improving
the questionnaire:
Thomas and Dan available to assist
a small group, Marilyn Cade, Grant Forsyth, Nick Wood.
Christine
Russo offered to
draft questions.
Rick
Shera would swop to
a small group from the Apparent Authority
Subjects:
A suggestion from personal experience in a
variety of surveys, Glen:
Question 13: suggested text:
“Are there any other points about your
experience of transferring domain names that you would like to make?”
Instead of leaving this an open ended, free
form response, make a list of possible responses, which, from your experience,
will cover practically all the respondents have to say and at the end one can
allow for “other:…….” category.
In this way it is easy to group responses
for analysis and obtain something
meaningful, rather than spend a lot of time reading through narrative. (In terms of the Whois survey, the basketing
will already be done.)