Re: [ga] ICANN Accountability Update

[George Kirikos <gkirikos@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi folks,

--- Danny Younger <dannyyounger@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Stuart Lawley and the ICM Registry (proponents of the .xxx
> initiative) have filed a 522-page brief in the ongoing Independent
> Review Process that began last June.  The document with supporting
> witness statements from Becky Burr and Dr. Liz Williams, along with
> expert testimonies from Milton Mueller and Prof. Jack Goldsmith, may
> be found here:  http://www.icmregistry.com/irp.html

There were some interesting details from the documents, for example:

"At that time, certain ICANN staff, including Kurt Pritz, and ICANN
Vice President, and John Jeffrey, ICANN's General Counsel, were very
clear that they wanted as many applications as possible to advance to
the next stage of the process, and encouraged us to be more positive
in our assessments in order to achieve that goal." (page 22 of Liz
Williams witness statement at
http://www.icmregistry.com/irp/ElizabethWilliams.pdf )

This would tend to explain the continued staff bias in the new gTLDs
process, where they tend to put their own opinions and interests ahead
of those of the public. Such blatant staff interference in the sTLD
process should not be tolerated, and indeed there should be
repercussions on the involved staff if the statements are demonstrated
to be true. [We opposed .xxx, and continue to believe it should be
rejected as a new TLD, just as a reminder, so we don't support ICM's
positions.]

"ICM would pay Afilias a variable fee of USD 5 per registration per
year;" (page 18 of Stuart Lawley witness statement,
http://www.icmregistry.com/irp/StuartLawley.pdf )

This demonstrates that even for small "boutique" TLDs without the scale
of .com (that same page discusses up to 250,000 registrations in the
business plan), costs are lower than VeriSign's fees. Under a tender
process for .com, fees would be far, far, lower than they are
today.

"for example, 123.456.78.912"  (page 2 of Jack Goldsmith witness
statement, http://www.icmregistry.com/irp/GoldsmithExpertReport.pdf )

It's always amusing when so-called "experts" use IP addresses that
cannot exist, because in the dot-decimal notation,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-decimal_notation , the numbers can
only go from 0 to 255, thus "456" and "912" would never occur in real
IP addresses. 123.45.67.89 might be a better choice.

There are several hundred pages worth of documents in all --- worth
reading, although a lot of statements need to be taken with a grain of
salt, given that they're from the point of view of advocates for ICM's
position.

Sincerely,

George Kirikos
http://www.leap.com/