Re: [ga] The Future of Domain Registry Pricing, if left uncapped
Gomes, Chuck wrote: I disagree with you that "the internet user has no effective voice in ICANN". In my humble opinion, I think they have a very effective voice through their buying choices.
- A member on a board of directors - A person who buys domain names Between these two, the difference in power to affect the development and imposition of policy is different to a degree that even the word "qualitative" is inadequate to describe the difference. If the way that members of the public affect ICANN policy is by their buying decisions, and if that is good enough for the public, then why is it also not good enough for registries, registrars, business interests, ISP, intellectual property bodies, and non-commercial organizations? What we have is an ICANN oligarchy that adheres to the old line that "What's good for business is good for the consumer." Certainly in the past that was not the case because there were not many choices, but that has changed considerably and hopefully will change even more going forward. I really don't think we have real choices. ICANN has mandated that the products offered by the domain name industry vary only in very small details. The variation that exists is in the way that registrars wrap this standard product with registrar services or bundle it with other registrar products (such as SSL certificates or web hosting.) Consider, for example, how different domain name products could be if ICANN were to permit real competition - my .ewe registry being an example: http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000159.html Under ICANN the domain name product offering is very much like Henry Ford's statement that we can have it any way we want it as long as it has been approved by ICANN - a integer number of years between 1 and 10 (why not 25 or 50?), all sales via a system of registrars, mandatory agreement to a private law (the UDRP), mandatory violation of privacy (whois), etc. I have been one of those who have always supported user representation in ICANN policy making processes and I still believe it's all about the users, but I have come to the conclusion that it may be impossible to ever adequately represent users. I know that you personally have always been supportive. I always hold your opinion in high regard and know you to be among the most receptive and intelligent of members of the ICANN community. Yet the fact that I, or any other person, can have a real exchange of ideas with you does not particularly change the fact that your position in ICANN is substantially more empowered than that of any particular member of the public or even the public en mass. Wd got off to a good start in year 2000. We had a real election for ICANN board seats. There were user organized web discussion sites - much better than the ALAC even aspires to. And there were real debates, both online and offline - for example here in the US we had face-to-face debates at both Harvard and Stanford. And, again using the US, there were seven candidates - any one of whom would have been a good board member. That election did not fail (even though ICANN demonstrated a rather amazing degree of technical incompetency and there were those who tried to undermine it.) But since ICANN's inner circle (and there is one, or was, at least when I was on the board) didn't like either the European or North American choices, the "reform" simply erased what was a proven viable system and replaced it with the ALAC, which can best be described as a spectacular dud. I strongly believe that, aside from ensuring security and stability I haven't seen ICANN actually doing that. I have not seen that ICANN is watching and ensuring that DNS queries quickly and accurately get turned into DNS replies 24x7x365 and without prejudice for or against any query source or query content. Yet that was ICANN's purpose. And if ICANN is not doing that watching and ensuring, then who is? What ICANN has done, is to treat the business side of DNS as its bailiwick. But that has about as much to do with stability of DNS query processing as the ticket counter of an airline has to do with the safe maintenance and flying of the aircraft. In most countries, the kind of making of a marketplace, the definition of products in that marketplace, the setting of prices, and the exclusion of potential competitors has been considered a combination in restraint of trade. I am wondering how long, after NTIA lifts its hand from ICANN, that people start asking whether the ICANN combination is one that is legal or not. Given that the ICANN registry fee - set without regard to the registry cost - is sucking perhaps as much as $300,000,000 per year out of domain name users each year (that's in .com alone), the question is rather more than merely academic. --karl--
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