RE: [ga] Dotster's latest letter to ICANN re: WLS -- Why hasn't ICANN acknowledged it?

["John Berryhill" <john@johnberryhill.com>]

Joanna Lane
>
> But John, the whole point is not to keep it simple. WLS adds another level
> to the marketing chest, generating squillions of dollars at the poor
> Registrants expense, right?

At the registrants' expense?  No.  If you want to be a domain name
registrant, you register your name, you pay your renewals, and you remain a
happy camper for a couple of bucks a year.

The games that I enjoy watching develop from out here in the cheap seats
have little to do with that.

WLS is simply a new Verisign monopoly product that will make money from
people who want to play the expiring domain name game.  It has been sold as
being "fairer" than the current game by people who are either tremendously
naive or stand to profit from it.  It's not "fairer" - it is simply
"different".  There will be winners and there will be losers.  Today's
losers think changing the rules will make them winners.  Tomorrow's losers,
who may very well be the same people, will come to believe that WLS is not
"fair".

Think of it as your landlord running a betting pool on whether you pay your
rent next month, and in which the marketability of the pool provides your
landlord with something of an interest in you not paying it.  It doesn't
really affect your status as a tenant... as long as you pay your rent.

The other interesting spectator sport here is that Dotster's Namewinner
service, and others, have been eating SnapNames' lunch.  SnapNames tries to
sell SnapBacks as a kind of "domain insurance" that will protect you from
your own stupidity in opting to try to remember to pay an annual renewal,
instead of maxing out the full term, for domains that are important to you.
The problem is that quite a few SnapBack holders have found out that it
doesn't always work.

So, rather than face up to the facts of life and human experience as they
relate to allocation systems for unique resources, the "solution" is to
pretend there has been a socialist revolution in the world and to have
people wait in line for these resources.  The real goof here is the magical
thinking that leads folks to believe that the people who used to beat them
to the watering hole will not also find ways to beat them to the line for
the watering hole.  In fact, if you look at the experience with SnapBacks,
and the figures posted here long ago by the venerable Mr. Gomes, there is a
factual basis to believe that is exactly what will happen with WLS, despite
the propaganda to the contrary.

But we know to a certainty who some of the losers will be if WLS is
implemented, and one of them will be Dotster.  This is what Dotster has
earned by creatively developing a model to compete effectively with
SnapNames, and by not having the right connections within that colorful
parade of exotic entertainment we call ICANN.

The problem with Dotster's "we'll sue ICANN" approach is that Dotster's
legal folks have obviously not sat down with copies of United States
Published Patent Application Nos. 20020091827 and 20020091703.

WLS is just one of two strategies being pursued to make this a monopoly
service.  If the folks in Oregon have gotten favorable action by now on
their patent applications, then the urgency of gettting WLS off the ground
may wane a bit.

And if anyone at SnapNames still reads this list, they might ask the kind
folks at Stoel Rives about 35 USC 102(a) and 37 CFR 1.56.  Because those
folks who know durn well where to find the section 102(a) evidence are going
to become very popular with Dotster in the future.

If you liked the trademark people, you will LOVE the patent people.  They
are slower to show up, but much more devastating when they arrive.

But to answer your question.  No.





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