Re: [ga] The End of Domain Tasting and its Consequences
Michael D. Palage wrote: This is an interesting discussion, I wish more members of the board (past and current) would engage in these kinds of things. (By-the-way, I liked your railroad analogy, although I disagreed with pieces of it, but we can get back to that later. And I do wish I could tell you of all the work I've done on the locomotive restoration project, but I can't as I have effectively lost the use of my legs.) But back to DNS and ICANN: Article I, Section 2, subparagraph 6 clearly states part of ICANN's Core Values is "[i]ntroducing and promoting competition in the registration of domain names where practicable and beneficial in the public interest." It is not tasked with regulating competition or setting price controls. Yet as a practical matter ICANN *is* setting prices and defining domain name products as well as choosing who may and who may not get the opportunity to risk his/her money by setting up a domain name business. Setting prices: ICANN establishes a registry fee component of every domain name purchased. That fee is a significant component of domain name costs, and is not tied in any way to the actual costs incurred by a registry to provide the registration service. Setting product specifications: ICANN requires that all domain name products be sold for periods of 1 to 10 years, in one year increments. All sales must come with the UDRP and mandatory publication of whois data. Also, certain customers often get preferential positions when buying names (e.g. sunrise and "land rush" preferences.) Setting business models: "General" TLDs must be run through a business model that requres a central registry surrounded by a cloud of registrars. Customers buy from the registrars and are not allowed to buy direct from the registry. (I'm intrigued by your suggestion about classifying TLDs according to the level of scrutiny of customers, but to my mind that classification is still quite an intrusion into the business operation of a TLD without it being required by any particular technical necessity.) Choice of new participants in the marketplace: ICANN subjects applicants to a deep, and largely subjective, evaluation of their financial structure, business structure, and business plans. If ICANN does not like what it sees the applicant is effectively precluded as there is no real alternative marketplace (i.e. no really competitive systems of DNS roots. And we should not forget that ICANN has taken an active role in creating techno-FUD in order to further reduce the chances of such competing roots from gaining a foothold.) Again, I ask, by what chain of legal authority does ICANN have the right to deny me the chance to succeed or fail, on my own dime, with my .ewe TLD? As I see it, ICANN has introduced only a very weak kind of competition at the retail level. At the deeper, wholesale level, ICANN has imposed its vision of how the domain name business place should operate. To call that "introducing competition" would be akin to asserting that the old Soviet system of centralized planning was "competitive". The DNS can hold tens of millions of TLDs before it goes boom. If we take that amount and cut it down a thousand-fold as a safety factor we still have room for thousands of entrapraneaurs to try their hand at setting up a TLD. ICANN should open the door, by lottery and auction, and let those of us who want to try to have a chance. Yet, ICANN has slammed the door on those who wish to try. (And by-the-way, ICANN still retains $2,000,000 in application fees for applications still pending since year 2000.) I still have yet to hear why ICANN, which is without a doubt a combination in restraint of trade in the colloquial sense, is not in violation of the laws of various nations. Is the immunity gained because NTIA's hand rests on ICANN's shoulder? Is it because the GAC is there? Or is the immunity like the temporary immunity of Wylie Coyote to gravity after he runs off of a cliff but before he looks down? And I have yet to see anyone articulate any believable technical reason, much less a convincing reason, that there are technical matters that require ICANN to impose the marketplace restrictions that it has. --karl--
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