Re: [ga] Thoughts/question on the WLS

[Gary Osbourne <gro@direct.ca>]

At 08:37 AM 11/07/02 -0700, Bret Fausett wrote:

>It strikes me that ICANN [...] ought not be placed in
>the position of deciding what is or is not
>"anticompetitive." Surely even those registrars who
>most oppose the WLS appreciate the danger in creating
>an ICANN that becomes a market regulator.

Isn't one of the reasons for ICANN's creation, and
continued existence, to increase/enhance competition?
And isn't another to decrease VeriSign's monopoly?
I cannot see how ICANN can do either of those without
some sort of market regulation. I don't see what is
so magical about the WLS to make it any different.

ICANN decides who gets .org, who gets new gTLDs, how
many of them there are, what kind they are, and how
often and when they are introduced. These are all
forms of market regulation. Indeed, for an
organization that allegedly doesn't have the
resources to do market regulation, they somehow
managed to micro-regulate the new TLD process.
And they somehow managed to keep that process out
of the courts, at least in terms of anti-trust
or anti-competition.

>(And we should ensure that the registrar
>accreditation contracts don't require the
>registrars to waive any private law remedies
>they may have for a registry's anticompetitive
>acts.)

Interesting how this conflicts with the situation
where registrant contracts require that they
waive any private law remedies for any registrar
or registry acts. So if someone uses the WLS, or
an existing service, to take my expired name, even
if the expiration was entirely the fault of the
registrar or registry, I have no recourse.

It seems to me that this is where anti-trust concerns
come in, not least when the registrar/registry stands
to gain more from having my name go to someone else
than stay with me. End users are left to the wiles of
a registry, and some registrars, with far less than
stellar reputations, in what amounts to a protection
racket. Whether ICANN washes its hands of this or not,
the silver will still cross its palm. -g

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