Nominet DRS Consultation

[michaeltoth]

Dear fellow Acorners,

Please find here: http://www.drsconsultation.co.uk an accurate summary of the DRS Consultation, which demonstrates where the current Nominet position differs from the majority view of those who responded to the recent DRS public consultation. As you can see, there are significant differences between the empirical results and Nominets intended DRS Policy implementations.

I am very concerned about these differences and I have invited Nominet to comment, but I am still awaiting any kind of formal response.

I therefore invite fellow Acorn Domain members to make your views on this issue known both to Nominet and on the drsconsultaion.co.uk forum.

 

[olebean]

Michael

How long ago did you contact them?

 

[bb99]

A fascinating summary - thank you for taking the time to put it together.

I will be sending in a complaint next week - although I'm sure it will fall on deaf ears..........

 

[domainking]

nominet

Hi Michael

Thanks for, posting that very intresting bud

 

[Edwin]

Nice tidy summary of the responses. It's worth noting however that it's unrealistic - and dangerous - to assume that Nominet has to abide by the wishes of the tiny handful of people who bothered to reply to their consultative process.

Considering that they manage six million domain names for hundreds of thousands of individual and corporate owners, acting or not acting on the responses of (in some cases) as few as a dozen people or so isn't necessarily any evidence of ill-intent or of ignoring the "will of the masses" or anything like that - the number of responses is so small that Nominet's own teams made different determinations after no doubt lengthy deliberations.

So while the points you're making are interesting and important, I don't think that they can necessarily be interpreted as some kind of failure on Nominet's part. Their duty after all is to create a system that works best for all registrants, not for a vocal fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of all registrants.

 

[rob]

Good work on the PDF.

I posted to nom-steer a few weeks back stating that Nominet probably have a similar document where they tally up how many said what. It seems Nominet have declined to publish the document.

I would be interested to know how (or if) they respond...

 

[Beasty]

Nice tidy summary of the responses. It's worth noting however that it's unrealistic - and dangerous - to assume that Nominet has to abide by the wishes of the tiny handful of people who bothered to reply to their consultative process.

Considering that they manage six million domain names for hundreds of thousands of individual and corporate owners, acting or not acting on the responses of (in some cases) as few as a dozen people or so isn't necessarily any evidence of ill-intent or of ignoring the "will of the masses" or anything like that - the number of responses is so small that Nominet's own teams made different determinations after no doubt lengthy deliberations.

So while the points you're making are interesting and important, I don't think that they can necessarily be interpreted as some kind of failure on Nominet's part. Their duty after all is to create a system that works best for all registrants, not for a vocal fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of all registrants.

Actually Edwin that is not strictly true. The Nominet staff are obliged to produce a Summary of the Consultation results. They choose the questions - but they can not choose the answers. You can find the flow chart for the process here:

http://www.nominet.org.uk/policy/develop/long/

A Summary is - by definition - an accurate objective distillation of the responses. It is not meant to be the opinion of one or more Nominet employees.

The process then requires the Board (if you like the MPs to the staff's civil servants) to make the final decision on what to do. However they should be doing so having made public the summarised results - and are of course answerable to the members if they do something that is out of line with the summary and can not support that decision.

I should add that the premise for your argument is flawed. Firstly, Nominet themselves say that the large number of responses is what caused them a problem summarising the results - so it is a bigger sample than previous Consultations that have been taken as authoritative.

Secondly the "silent majority" or "it's what we hear privately" or "we know better" is the defence of the oligarch. Put it another way, would you be happy if in a general election the civil servants said "well the 40% of people who did not vote would have supported the candidate A - so even though he got less votes than Candidate B, we know best so he wins!"

If a Consultation process is to be gone through and the views of those aware of it and interested enough are obtained - then the responses have to mean something. If those who are elected want to differ from the popular result - then they should be honest and tell us that they are doing it and why they are doing it. If the voters don't like it, they can vote them out.

Seb, Gordon, Angus, Fay - where are you? Explain your decision.

 

[grandin]

Are you sure?

Are you sure Beasty?? All I get from Nominet is that they are not for profit and that fact allows them to 'wash their hands' and be impartial in respect to rights issues....surely such impartiality should be extended to the formation of any new DRS?

If they are to remain truely impartial why don't they outsource the task to a review group where members can elect who they want to see on the review group....anyone should be allowed to stand and be paid for their involvement....members of the review group should be experts, registrants and IP lawyers

Lee

 

[fred]

Secondly the "silent majority" or "it's what we hear privately" or "we know better" is the defence of the oligarch. Put it another way, would you be happy if in a general election the civil servants said "well the 40% of people who did not vote would have supported the candidate A - so even though he got less votes than Candidate B, we know best so he wins!"

I don't see how you can directly compare a consultation to a general election! An election is a vote - a consultation is more like a particular party holding a 'focus group' to help decide policy.

 

[Beasty]

I don't see how you can directly compare a consultation to a general election! An election is a vote - a consultation is more like a particular party holding a 'focus group' to help decide policy.

But it is the closest Nominet gets - though I accept it is more like a referndum than an election. However if you ask a question then at the very least you need to summarise the responses accurately and then make clear whether the decision making body (the Board) is choosing to take a different path and to explain why.

If the Board is not in fact making the decision based on accurate data, then I suggest there may be a corporate governance issue to consider - which is particularly important given Nominet's monopoly position. Board members need to have the courtesy to come on here and explain to people who put in time and effort to respond to the Consultation why they did what they did.

 

[sneezycheese]

Supprised

So Acorners, what's going on? :???:

Is someones 'new car' choice more important to you guys than the protection of your domain names? or don't you understand the implications of Nominets intended modifications to the DRS? :cry:

Hopefully I'll have time to post some examples later today.

Regards,

Sneezy.