Re: [ga] lawyers
I agree, ICANN is ripe for being at the wrong end of legal actions claiming that ICANN has unfairly and improperly acted as a combination for the purpose of restraining trade, restricting the entry of vendors into the marketplace, establishing minimum prices, and prohibiting new product innovations. What will make these legal actions hard is the reality is that behind ICANN's trade restrictive policies stands (hands-off, most of the time ) the government of a superpower at war. What you are missing is this: There is a threshold question whether ICANN is acting as an arm of the US government or not - it's a binary question. If the answer is "Yes, ICANN is really the US Dept of Commerce in disguise" then the question then becomes one whether the US has the authority and whether they have exercised it properly. (And there are some pretty solid rules about this, despite the claims of our Sun King Nouvelle.) If the answer is "No, ICANN is really and truely private then the fact that the US dept of Commerce may be watching and cringing has no effect on the legal case. This was among the questions asked and points raised by Michael Froomkin in his paper "Wrong Turn In Cyberspace". And the GAO reviews of DoC and ICANN do not indicate that the DoC has much of a leg to stand on in terms of proper authority. --karl--
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