Re: [ga] Text of Letter to U.S. Commerce Dept. on ICANN Reform

[William X Walsh <william@wxsoft.info>]

No is suggesting, at least not I, that ICANN doesn't need reform from
the top to the bottom, but agreeing with that does not mean you should
agree with the letter Verisign et. al. wrote, or the comments they
made in the media about it.

In fact, because this letter ask for changes that would go AGAINST
many of the things we want to see changed inside of ICANN, there is a
responsibility to oppose it.

If you give even the semblance of support to this letter, you are
asking for the type of ICANN that Verisign wants, and that is one
where they get to call all the shots.

Oppose the letter, and oppose ICANN, the two actions are not mutually
exclusive.

The concept "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" does not always
apply, as the US has come to learn so very well recently.  A lesson we
should make sure we learn here as well.

Friday, August 02, 2002, 9:17:19 PM, Gary Osbourne wrote:

> At 03:04 AM 03/08/02 +0200, Marc Schneiders wrote:

>>I do, as I said. And I did. The point I tried to make,
>>is that the description of the registries so much fits
>>ICANN too. It means that in principle Lynn is able to
>>see what he is doing. That is a start.

> I said the same thing a couple of days ago on ICANNWatch,
> only less briefly, and probably less well. Nevertheless
> I reprint it here with minor editing:

> M. Stuart Lynn is quoted in the article as stating:

> "A registry by definition has a monopoly, so they
> all have a common interest in preserving individual
> monopolistic practices, so they don't want to be
> accountable to anybody."

> All a registry has a monopoly over is a TLD. That's
> not much of a monopoly with about 260 TLDs out there.
> Admittedly VeriSign has a huge chunk of the total
> existing registrations with the .com TLD, and another
> two big chunks wih .net and presently .org, and within
> those TLDs can, and has, acted like a monopolist.

> But wasn't one of the reasons for ICANN's existence
> to increase competition? So they renegotiate with
> VeriSign, in secret and without anyone else asking
> them to, the .net agreement so that VeriSign remains
> more of a monopoly. Then they complain that VeriSign
> is a monopoly. ICANN also brings out new TLDs to
> compete with VeriSign. What does it do? It takes
> nearly forever to do so, brings out essentially a
> total of two potential competitors, .biz and .info,
> and handles the whole process rather spectacularily
> badly. Then they complain that VeriSign is a monopoly.

> Well, it was ICANN's task to lessen that monopoly,
> they've done a terrible job to date (and one waits to
> see how badly they can muck up the .org redelegation)
> and now they complain that VeriSign is a monopoly.
> It's hard to work up much sympathy for ICANN, this is
> a bed of their own remaking.

> Further, using ICP-3, also sprung on the internet
> community without anyone asking for it, ICANN claims
> control of the entire namespace. That is far more of
> a monopoly. It is a monopoly of monopolies. Let's
> take M. Stuart Lynn's statement and reword it a bit
> and see if it fits:

> "ICANN by definition has a monopoly, so they have
> an interest in preserving monopolistic practices,
> so they don't want to be accountable to anybody."

> Sound like anyone you know? Much as I don't like
> VeriSign, I am free to go and register in numerous
> non-VeriSign TLDs. If I don't like ICANN, well I can
> use a so-called alternate root, but their share of
> that market is orders of magnitude lower than the
> share of non-VeriSign TLDs in that market, so low
> that most of them must also use most or all of
> ICANN's root, and besides, ICANN with ICP-3
> discourages their use, ICANN is even by
> self-definition a monopoly. And if we go down a
> level to IP numbers ICANN has a total monopoly. If
> we should be concerned about monopoly TLDs behaving
> badly, we should be far more concerned about ICANN
> behaving badly. M. Stuart Lynn should really take
> a look in the mirror. -g

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Best regards,
William X Walsh <william@wxsoft.info>
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