"Ron Stark" <ronstark&#167;snapsite.com.au> wrote:
> The weakness is that you (as in a registrar - not necessarily you as
> Enetica) say that you never approach a reseller's customer directly by
> way of direct marketing.  But you can (and are obligated to) contact
> registrants with respect to domain names.  Now how do you deal with
> that?  You use that vehicle to direct _your_ client (the registrar) to
> your website, where you can now regail _my_ client with offers of
> hosting, email services, websites etc - in other words, you are
> immediately my competitor.

Yes.

And it seems to me that the only way to effectively deal with this is to say that a registrar may not sell domain names directly. Period. Just as a reseller may not sell a domain name at all, only the service of obtaining one. The term "reseller" is a bit misleading on that point altogether.

> I'm not sure the answer lies in changing auDA's process either, because
> either way you end up either restricting registrars' business, or you
> are disenfranchesising resellers.

The only alternative I can see is to forbid registrars from advertising their product except to resellers, OR to mandate a higher direct selling price than they offer resellers. I don't think those can work.

Regards, K.

--
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Karl Auer (kauer&#167;biplane.com.au)                   +41-43-2660706 (h)
http://www.biplane.com.au/~kauer/                  +41- 1-6327531 (w)