Re: PAB The Green Paper and competing registries

From: Jim Dixon (jdd@vbc.net)
Date: Fri Feb 27 1998 - 10:32:24 PST


On Fri, 27 Feb 1998, John Charles Broomfield wrote:

> > This is not what I want; it [is] what the chair of the meeting, the DTI
> > representative, said was an absolute requirement.
> >
> > If pressed, he might waffle on this. But it would be sensible to
> > assume that he meant what he said and that this is the position of
> > the UK government, who currently hold the European Union presidency.
> >
> > I believe that you would get much the same response from DG IV, the
> > European Commission's department dealing with competition.
>
> I understand completely that Jim wants to get a solution and that this
> solution, no matter how much we dislike it HAS to be acceptable to the
> politicians. It's too late now to just tell all politicians "sod off".

The person concerned is a DTI civil servant, not a politician.

> Now, unless I've got things completely wrong, "absolute requirements"
> from
> politicians are not absolute at all.
> Obviosuly if the politician is asked "do you prefer a monopoly registry
> or would you prefer competing registries?" he'd probably answer the
> latter.
> A bit of coaching for him might be a good idea

Sometimes it isn't worth trying to sell a proposal. As I said up
there someplace, if you pressed him a bit the meeting's chair might
begin to waffle [get vague about] the competition issue. But that
would not mean much.

There are magic words at the DTI or the Commission. "Competition"
is one of them. Competition is Good. If you try to sell no-competition,
they might politely agree to consider the idea. Privately they would
consider you an idiot.

As I said, you can attack the Green Paper by saying that it is
advocating multiple monopolies. Monopolies are Bad. But if you
argue strongly for no-competition, you will simply lose credibility.

> > Similarly on price. I think that you are being idealistic in claiming
> > that prices will inevitably fall. If you look at the monopoly nTLD
> > registries across Europe, you will find many different pricing policies.
> > Some registries are run very well and have low prices to registrars;
> > some are run very badly, have bad policies, and have high prices.
> > Where CORE sits on the spectrum will be largely determined by chance.
> > In the longer run, I would certainly expect a slow upward drift in
> > internal costs. Bureaucracies are like that.
>
> I don't think that the comparison is good. Currently only the nominet
> model
> would be a comparable example.

Nominet does as well as it does largely due to the character of one
man, Willie Black. I am not saying that he's perfect. But he is
very well suited for the job he has.

> In any case, for CORE to have prices slowly increasing would mean that
> the
> registrars are happy with it, which would seem ludicrous to me...

Bureaucracies become increasingly good at justifying their spending
as time passes. Doesn't everyone know that the British Admiralty
increased steadily in size as the fleet got smaller and smaller?

--
Jim Dixon                  VBCnet GB Ltd           http://www.vbc.net
tel +44 117 929 1316                             fax +44 117 927 2015



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