At 12/21/01 2:13 AM, Ross Wm. Rader wrote: >My question for all of you is are you opposed to the project because you >aren't part of the pilot or are you opposed to it because it isn't right to >do something like this under any circumstances (even when it is available to >all of our resellers)? Or is it something else? Understanding this will >really go a long way in allowing us to more appropriately interpret what you >are all saying to us - sort of the most important part of the pilot (getting >feedback I mean).
Well, the public description of the project has been somewhat vague, but it sounds like you're asking "Would OpenSRS resellers be interested in some kind of program that allows them to resell expired names?" The answer to that is that I guess I might, if it was a foregone conclusion that all registrars were going to do something like this, and the resulting program was equally fair to all resellers... but the whole idea is still suspect. I believe that both the letter and spirit of ICANN agreements prevent this, and that furthermore, it's unfair to the community at large for any registrar to do anything with expired domains except promptly release them. Anything beyond that should be a registry activity. NSI registrar's despicable record in this respect is a regular topic of conversation here (if not the most common topic), and the idea that OpenSRS could do anything similar without causing a gigantic ruckus is absurd. However, here's the trouble: the question that I answered above is NOT what people have been complaining about. The complaint is that OpenSRS apparently sold expired domains exclusively to a certain third party without going through the registry, and without involving or even notifying other resellers. That is, that OpenSRS offered a third party the exclusive right to get the first shot at OpenSRS's expired domains. That is a whole different animal, and has little to do with questions about whether OpenSRS might offer some sort of (necessarily different) program to ALL resellers. The vague defense of this behavior that has been offered so far is that it was a feasibility test program that might eventually be offered to all resellers. I'm sorry, but I have a hard time buying that. First of all, as someone else pointed out, a test program is something involving only OpenSRS internal systems, etc. -- test programs don't consist of transferring live domains to a third party in exchange for money. That's an active program. Secondly, it doesn't make sense that such a program could be rolled out to all resellers. What the third party was paying for was exclusive access; it wouldn't make sense for that party to pay an extra fee if all resellers were given equal access to the expiring names. If OpenSRS was actually testing a way to, say, give all resellers a level playing field to auction off expired names, exclusively transferring names to a single party doesn't seem to be how you'd test it -- the two have very little to do with each other besides the superficial similarity that they both involve the transfer of expired names. All in all, this behavior is so far over the line of what I would consider acceptable that like William X Walsh, at first I simply didn't believe that it could be true and assumed others were confused. Live and learn, I guess. -- Robert L Mathews, Tiger Technologies
