Re: [registrars] ORG Redelegation

[Jim Archer <jarcher@registrationtek.com>]

Ok, now that I had my rant, let me try to articulate my concerns a bit more 
clearly.  And maybe toss in a bit more rant as well.

After participating in the ORG transition conference call with PIR, I see 
that the registrars are being burdened with a tremendous amount of work. 
We need to test our RRP with the Afilias RRP and make changes if/when it 
does not work correctly.  In 2003 we have to migrate over to EPP with ORG 
becoming a thick registry.  Of course, this means we further lose control 
of our customer data.

We need to review and execute more agreements, make more deposits, do more 
engineering, take another OTE test (even though we are all active on ORG 
and have been forever), change our marketing all during the holiday season 
and all by January 1st.

In return for all this, who benefits?  We sure don't.  PIR, although being 
a non-profit, is still charging the same price as Verisign did, $6.00.  For 
some reason the new for profit registries can price lower than PIR!  This 
entire change over is going to cost us a tremendous amount of time and 
money for absolutely no gain.

Does the industry gain anything? Not at all.  Who really cares who the ORG 
registry is. If anything, the industry might lose.  Verisign did a fine job 
with the ORG domain. Does the general public gain anything?  No.  Their ORG 
domains will work no better than they did before (and hopefully no worse). 
Although PIR plans to do a lot of marketing for ORG and promotion of it, I 
don't see this as benefiting domain holders.  Nor does it benefit us.  ORG 
has been around forever.  Its not as if its a new concept to promote.

How did we let this happen?  When are we as a group going to start to 
promote our own interests aggressively?  With each passing month we lose a 
bit more control over how we do business.  There seems to be new 
requirements added frequently, but none that benefit our bottom line.  We 
need an advocate!

ICANN has not done a great job with the Internet and perhaps we should 
leverage the fact that their contract is up for renewal soon to pressure 
them into making some changes that will actually benefit the industry for a 
change.  We fund 40% of their budget and what great change has ICANN done 
to improve the industry lately?  They threatened to sue Verisign Registrar 
because they had about 17 erroneous whois entries.  Woo Hoo, that's a good 
use of resources!  They raised our fees.  They took ORG away from Verisign 
and assigned it to PIR, making more work for us with no benefit to anyone. 
They dragged all their members all over the globe in the name of being 
politically correct, but accomplished little at these meetings.  Enough is 
enough.  If a commercial enterprise was run this way, they would go under. 
This waste has to stop; no one is benefiting from any of this nonsense.

Jim




--On Thursday, November 14, 2002 5:44 PM -0500 Jim Archer 
<jarcher@registrationtek.com> wrote:

> What a pain!!!!!
>
> We have to do a new OTE test, we have to migrate to EPP, it will be a
> thick registry!
>
> Is there any point to this?  I wonder if we should bother.
>
> ******************************
> Jim Archer
> CEO
> http://www.registrationtek.com