Re: [wg-c] Pre-sold TLDs

[Jonathan Weinberg <weinberg@mail.msen.com>]

At 03:35 PM 4/18/00 -0400, John Charles Broomfield wrote:
>To the chair:
>	Have we reached consensus as William states it? Ie consensus on
>running gTLDs (as in generic, not as in chartered) in different ways? If
>so, could I have the wording and the date when we (WG-C) reached this
>agreement?
>	AFAIK it is still being discussed.
>	Also, AFAIK, a large amount of the members of this workgroup would
>not settle for a gTLD to be run in any other way except shared, which is why
>I find strange that William affirms this.
>[snip]

	We did a straw poll last August addressing some of these these issues.
The WG was smaller then, and only 25 people participated.  (In the poll, I
used "gTLD" to include any top-level domain other than a ccTLD -- both TLDs
that have a charter limiting registrations and those that don't.)

	On the issue of whether gTLDs should be for-profit or non-profit, eleven
people voted that *all* registries should be run on a not-for-profit,
cost-recovery basis.  Fourteen people voted that *some* registries should
be run on a not-for-profit, cost-recovery basis, and that others could be
run on a for-profit basis.  We had a lot of discussion on the issue
subsequently, and it was addressed in most of the position papers, but we
never reached a consensus position.

	On the issue of sharing, twelve people voted for "option one": that all
gTLDs must be shared (that is, open to competitive registrars).  Eight
voted for "option two": that ICANN should presumptively require that gTLDs
be shared, but allow exceptions in particular cases.  Five voted for
"option three": that ICANN should not require registries to support
competitive registrars in any of their TLDs, although registries might
independently choose to do so.  In my own summary, I wrote at the time:
"These results seem to me striking.  On the one hand, 80% of those
participating voted for options one or two -- that is, that ICANN should
impose *some* sharing requirement.  On the other hand, a majority of those
voting indicated that there should be room for non-shared TLDs as well.
This suggests to me that the WG may well be able to find rough consensus
around option two as a compromise position (or, at the very least, that
*if* the WG is able to find rough consensus, it will be around option two).
 . . . [T]he numbers suggest a route to a resolution — it seems likely that
option two can provide a workable compromise, consensus, position."  In
fact, though, we didn't seize the opportunity to forge consensus on this
issue at the time.

Jon