Re: [TLDA-Members] Fwd: BulkRegister partners with New.Net

[elliot noss]

TIME OUT******

Great discussion. I don't want to intrude. I just want to give you all my position (which may or may not be the "official" Tucows position, but is pretty close to it currently) on four things:

- I believe in a single, authoritative root within which all tlds exist for the public good and that all registry operators are contractors operating in that context (implicit here is a complete rejection of first-come-first-served);

- My personal experience has been that ICANN is open and transparent, in fact it is by far the most transparent generalist organization I have ever seen and I say this both as the CEO of a public company (in a world of Sorbannes-Oxley) and as someone who has been quite involved in ICANN since its inception. It has been my experience that people who are not agreed with or not (in their view) adequately listened to tend to then complain about openness and transparency. They never say "not open compared to....". TO what? To congress/parliament? To the ITU? To the UN? To a public company? To a private company? Many people complain about the meetings being held in remote locations and refuse to see this as being global, but choose to instead infer this is about hiding from the public. I hope ALL of those folks (that means you Michael Froomkin) will be in Montreal in June for the first ICANN meeting ever on the East Coast of North America. There is no excuse for any of the shrill critics to not test openness (and please don't compare this to the IETF process, which I respect and admire, but which is EXTREMELY narrow in scope and subject matter. Try and "access" the IETF as a non-geek);

- We are not big fans of the Verisign approach to IDNs and were the folks who fought to extend the registration terms for the existing names when they wanted to charge again for renewals;

- We will always try and offer services that we think you want and that, therefore, we can make money offering. The services we choose to offer are based upon pragmatic criteria not political ones.

I (likely) won't respond to comments on the above only because I want you all to engage in the discussion and I want to enjoy following it. I think "discuss" should be primarily yours and my experience has been that when I wade in (which I try to do rarely) the discussion becomes more of a spectator sport, hence the need for a new way to conduct the discussion (second bit of foreshadowing for those following at home).

TIME IN*********