Many of you know me as one of the original OpenSRS guys, but more recently, I’ve been involved in running Tucows retail services - Domain Direct, NetIdentity and ItsYourDomain. As you may have already read, effective today, we are getting out of the hosting business. You can read the full press release in our Media Archive.

Why are we doing this and what does it have to do with you?

From a retail perspective, we believe that it is extremely important for us to be able to provide world-class quality for all of the services we offer. By examining the market, seeking feedback from our end users, and discussing our strengths and weaknesses internally, one thing became clear. In order to provide world-class quality for all of the services we offer, we must simplify our service offerings.

Many of our competitors attempt to provide a “one-stop internet services shopping experience”. We call this “the Walmart way”. We believe that we have a much higher chance at succeeding by doing very few things extremely well for our clients. You could call this “the boutique approach”. Our goal is to help our customers use their domain names and email addresses with the great services that other companies are already providing. In other words, rather than trying to compete with companies like Hostopia to offer better hosting services than they do, we are going to focus on making sure that our products work better with their great services than any other provider does.

Tucows Resellers also benefit from this increased focus. My retail team spends a lot of time with the OpenSRS and Tucows Email teams to ensure that they understand where their services are succeeding and failing from a reseller perspective. Being in the building provides us with a great opportunity to improve these services for the benefit of all Tucows resellers. With the benefit of our increased focus, we will also be able to invest more time working specifically on translating everything that we are learning about how to sell domain names and email in a competitive market into programs that Tucows resellers will be able to take advantage of. These programs could take the form of new code, new services and new marketing programs, depending on what works best in each case.

I’m very pleased with this development as I really believe it will be of tremendous benefit to all of Tucows customers - retail and resale. Of course, if you have any questions about the specifics of the transaction, please feel free to leave us a comment and either myself, or someone from the team will respond.

And of course, we will be notifying all affected customers about this change and how it will affect their hosting service - if at all. Many of our shared hosting clients are already hosted with Hostopia, so the changes should be minimal for the vast majority.

After a long wait, ICANN has issued a much needed clarification describing how it interprets its domain name portability policy.

Tucows has been an advocate of strong domain name portability policy since the early days of ICANN. We believe that consumer choice is a fundamental element of a healthy market. Without strong domain name portability policies the domain market will never be as strong as it should be.

The debate dates back to the early days of ICANN. Network Solutions, still owned by Verisign, had 100% market share. They were also the only registrar. By the end of the first full year of domain name competition, their market share was almost cut in half, falling to just 52.9% market share. At this time, fewer than 1 in 5 customers were choosing to do business with Network Solutions.

The former monopoly had serious problems to address.

The primary driver of this massive loss of market share was the substantial drop in domain name prices that Tucows introduced into the market in January, 2000. At the time domain, the early competitive registrars and Network Solutions, were selling domain names for $30-$35 each. We sold our first name as an accredited registrar on January 16, 2000 for $10 making us the first competitive registrar to seriously compete with NSI for real market share. NSI has since reduced their prices to closer match the market but they are still viewed by many as a high-price provider.

When faced with these prospects, most business owners react with a competitive response - new pricing, special promotions, enhancing features, etc. Network Solutions reacted by making it as difficult as possible for domain registrants to transfer their business to one of the newly created registrars. Instead of working harder to keep their customers, they were going to make it impossible for their customers to leave.

Tucows advocacy resulted in ICANN adopting a set of domain name portability policies entitled “Inter-Registrar Domain Name Transfer Policy”. In its earliest form, draft versions of this policy proposal were actually modeled on Tucows transfer practices which continued to be viewed as a benchmark for the industry. While the new portability policy had widespread support amongst the community, Network Solutions, Go Daddy and Register.com strongly opposed its adoption.

Network Solutions and GoDaddy reacted by implementing more obstacles for customers who wanted to leave and try a new provider. They claimed these restrictions would enhance “consumer protection” and “security” but the net result was simply that it became a lot harder for registrants to transfer their domain names away to new providers.

These customer hostile policy abuses continue into the present day.

This is why Tucows especially welcomes this clarification from ICANN. This advisory specifically addresses many of these policy abuses and provides greater recourse for our staff to help our customers in resolving domain transfer related issues. Provided that ICANN backs up this advisory with clear enforcement against those ignoring its advice, it should become easier for duly authorized registrants to safely and securely transfer their service to a new provider.

Most people would jump on the opportunity to spend 10 days in Los Angeles. Sun, surf and stars - it doesn’t get any better.

Of course, most people aren’t involved in ICANN. 10 days with no sunlight and all of our surfing was done on the web.

A typical ICANN meeting starts out with the pre-meeting activity. This time, I flew down a couple of days ahead of the pre-meetings for some pre-pre-meetings to make sure that the pre-meetings went smoothly. Confused yet? Me too and I’ve been doing this for eight years. The big item on the agenda this past week was the issue of Whois. The problem that we face is that ICANN’s requirement to publish personal contact information on the web via Whois contradicts privacy laws in many countries. We’ve been actively involved in trying to find a compromise between the anti-privacy crowd who wants to continue with Whois in its current form regardless of what the law says and the pro-privacy folks on the other hand that are looking for exemptions that would allow regular people to opt-out of having their data publicly accessible. Not all of their data, just their phone number and email addresses.

The anti-privacy folks (mostly the same people that brought you the RIAA and other over-zealous intellectual property organizations) don’t like this approach because they believe that this will make it easier for normal folks to infringe on their intellectual property rights. I won’t go into the details of their arguments, but suffice to say that there is very little in the way of “intellect” in their opposition.

I personally spent four days in various back-room meetings trying to negotiate a compromise that would work for everyone. At one point, I had an explicit agreement from the intellectual property representatives, but when the chips hit the table, they “forgot” that we had made a deal. Serves me right, I should have had them sign something. Never do a handshake deal with a lawyer from Hollywood.

I won’t go into all of the gory details around Whois, there are a bazillion press reports on the subject. Dvorak called me “stupid”, elsewhere I was referred to as “emotional” and that I was “overreacting”. Very few of the reports actually got the details of the story right - most of them were heavily influenced by the highly-organized lobby against our compromises. Never underestimate the capabilities of a ticked off intellectual property lawyer.

Nick Jesdanun and Burke Hansen wrote my two favorite stories, although what Burke thought was an attempt at a protest was actually an aborted attempt to sneak out to the washroom.

The next big issues on the ICANN policy agenda relate to domain tasting and “front-running”. There will also be some additional work in the area of domain transfers. We will continue to take a leadership role on these issues as we have on other ICANN issues in the past. It is an important organization that makes important decisions related to the future of the internet and we believe it is critical for us to make sure that we look out for the interests of our business and those of our resellers in this forum.

This meeting also marked the end of Vint Cerf’s term as Chairman of the Board. At a gala event at Sony Studios, everyone from Al Gore to Darth Vader participated in sending Vint off in style with the kind of words and more than just a touch of Hollywood flourish. Vint will be replaced with Peter Dengate-Thrush, a long time ICANN participant with roots in the ccTLD community. Tucows completely supports Peter and we strongly believe that he will have a positive effect on ICANN and its future direction. It is definitely worth noting that Peter was one of the few ICANN directors that voted against allowing Verisign the unchecked capability to increase domain name registration prices.

The next ICANN meeting will be held in New Delhi this coming February. Tucows will of course be there - our 28th consecutive meeting. Whew!

(photo’s by AP and Joi Ito)

As this article illustrates, there is a lot of interest brewing around ICANN’s proposed Whois privacy policies. I suspect that a lot of this interest is due to the fact that the intellectual property community can see the end of their free ride and they are really turning up their efforts in a last ditch attempt to overturn ICANN’s progress.

For as long as the Whois system has been around, they’ve been able to look up your personal contact data and churn out demand letters and other nasty legal notices on demand. The problem with this behavior is that the system was designed to support this type of activity, nor should this type of activity be continued at the expense of the privacy rights of the majority of internet users. The intellectual property lobby pays *nothing* for the ongoing support or maintenance of this sytem, yet they put incredible demands on it. I have actually asked them who should pay for change to the Whois system necessary to support their demands and they’ve said point blank that the most equitable way would be to tax all domain registrations!

I spoke with Nick Jesdanun of Associated Press yesterday about the whois policy recommendations that were recently put forward, and he’s written a typically great article about the general issues surrounding whois and whois data privacy.

Many owners of Internet addresses face this quandary: Provide your real contact information when you register a domain name and subject yourself to junk or harassment. Or enter fake data and risk losing it outright.

Help may be on the way as a key task force last week endorsed a proposal that would give more privacy options to small businesses, individuals with personal Web sites and other domain name owners.

– Nick Jesdanun, Associated Press

I would have liked to have seen the article include a slight bit mroe detail around some of the reactions coming from outside of North America. Hollywood’s lobby is pretty strong on this side of the pond, but that hasn’t stopped heavyweights like the European Union from weighing in on the issue on the side of privacy [PDF].

After years of debate, ICANN is moving towards adopting policy recommendations that will reform the gTLD whois system and allow registrants a greater degree of privacy, certainty of ownership and control over their internet identity.

Law.com has a decent write up on the whois issue, albeit with a decidedly pro-intellectual property slant.

An organization that polices the domain name system is likely to decide this year — after several years of debate — to adopt a new policy that would let Web site owners keep most of their contact information confidential when they register for a name. Instead, they would be allowed to list a separate go-between point of contact.

The basic issue at stake is whether or not intellectual property lawyers should continue to have unfettered access to your customer data or not. The usual suspects - the RIAA, MPAA and curiously, internet heavyweights like Microsoft and Yahoo! say yes, definitely. Naturally, Tucows came out on the side of the customer and held the line to ensure that basic personal privacy rights are respected as far as domain registration data goes.

The upcoming ICANN meeting in Lisbon will certainly see more discussion on these issues, but the recent closure of the Whois Task Force is a great step in the right direction.

Tucows has been at the forefront of this issue since the beginning, we'll definitely keep you informed as it progresses.

Last weekend, I presented as part of a panel discussion on Net Neutrality at the alt.telecom.policy.forum

Here are my slides via Slideshare…

My message was simple: Net Neutrality isn't a new issue, nor is it over. The fight for the basic rights that the Internet's end-to-end architecture give us are being slowly but surely taken away from us by Big Media and the Bellheads. We need to be aware of this and take specific steps to ensure that we don't lose anything else, or better, turn the tide.

Apologies for some of the formatting. Keynote doesn't have a great Powerpoint export, and Slideshare only supports PPT uploads.

Tucows is holding a “Best Dressed Squishy Cow” competition as part of our Hallowe'en fun and games. The contest is only open to staffers, but I thought you'd like to take a look at Ian Hall's submission on behalf of the retail services team..

Yes - that's a *real* 5 milliwatt laser and a *real* plasma backdrop (voice activated even). Ian actually did all the work, but the retail team is definitely jumping in to share the credit It looks like there's going to be some stiff competition this year. We're also holding a pumpkin carving contest as well. I'll definitely post some more video and photo's of the various entries as the competition progresses as I'm sure others will as well.

I’ve received the odd mention in the press – usually some obscure point about an irrelevant Internet governance or technical policy issue. I never expected to get any attention from the hardcore IT press for anything of technical substance – good, bad or otherwise. Having recently assumed responsibility for managing the retail aspects of the Mailbank business portfolio, I guess all bets are off now…

Based on messages being sent out from Tucows, the migration process has hit several speedbumps.

- via ITworld.com.

Joel Shore, the author of the article, goes on to nail the source of of our problems square on the head. My planning process was rushed, which lead to corner cutting, which lead to mistakes and problems and a decreased focus on getting the quality equation just right. This lead to avoidable mea culpa’s on the retail network status page and our customer bulletins – which eventually lead to Joel’s article.

The good news is that the fixes are well underway and ahead of schedule. The bad news is that we could have used the time spent fixing these issues on more productive activities – not to mention completely avoided invoking the wrath of our customers and Joel’s unflattering attention.

Take the time to dot your i’s and cross your t’s. Your customers will thank you for it.

For some more detail on the issues we’ve run ourselves into, you can check out our customer blog where I’ll be posting some more information the steps we’re taking to improve our quality control processes over the coming days.

(speaking of QA, when I clicked on the link on the ITworld website to send a copy of the article to the folks here at Tucows, here’s the response I got from their webserver  – click the thumbnail for a full view)

(originally posted at http://www.byte.org/blog/_archives/2006/9/27/2367434.html)

Tralliance, the good folks that brought you .TRAVEL, are looking to implement something they are calling “search.travel” in the .TRAVEL TLD. 

ICANN Opens Public Comment Period on the Tralliance Proposed New Registry Service

– via ICANN.

ICANN's own Security and Stability Advisory Committee, SSAC, is saying that they don’t find any material difference between this proposal and Verisign’s Sitefinder implementation.

Bret Fausett has some thoughts about this on his blog as well.

In the spirit of getting involved, it would be great if you took the time to let ICANN know what you think of this proposal and took part in their public comment process.

I really find the whole Net Neutrality debate somewhat disheartening. There are two sides to this debate, one rooted in the realities of the way the internet works, and one rooted in trying to “optimize” the internet to the advantage of a very specific set of applications (video and voice traffic) offered by a very few providers (primarily large network operators). Unfortunately, one of these sides seems to have gained the rhetorical upper hand and seems to be controlling the current tone and tenor of the discussions.

A nationwide survey of 800 registered voters is being touted by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation because it purports to show that Americans are not interested in net neutrality legislation.

– via Ars Technica

 Of course internet users aren’t interested in net neutrality legislation – most internet users don’t have a clue of how the internet works, ought to work and was designed to work.

I personally don’t have an issue with whether or not you want to apply QOS or traffic shaping to your packets, but please, leave mine along. The internet is not a cohesive thing, it is a series of interconnection agreements between various independently operated networks and a series of technical protocols outlining how those interconnects should happen for maximum interoperability. Just because you might own the wires, doesn’t mean that you own the bits.

My biggest problem with the entire situation is that it is largely an artifact of bad regulation. In my opinion, the FCC and CRTC aren’t doing anyone any favors with their 3rd party access and hi-speed internet regulatory policies. Competition between a small number of players with very large market share isn’t competition. Competition between DSL and Cable isn’t competition. True competition can only happen in the absence of over-reaching regulation. Which can’t happen in an environment where the very large players have had the benefit of regulatory protection for far too many years.

The regulators need to get off the pot with this one. We must demand that either strong legislation that protects the internet is enacted, or we must demand that protectionist regulation is dismantled to ensure that everyone has a chance to benefit from the unique opportunities that the internet has to offer.