Re: [ga] Court oversight

[George Kirikos <gkirikos@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

--- Veni Markovski <veni@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> There's a contradiction here. Let me ask you: shall the market define
> the prices for domains? ICANN has been blamed in the past for acting 
> like a regulator. What do you think?

You're simple-minded. As ICANN's lawyers have said in court:

http://www.circleid.com/posts/print/icann_tiered_pricing_tld_biz_info_org_domain/

""in a single supplier market, price caps are, if anything,
procompetitive (Mot. at 13-14);" [page 1 of the document, line 13, page
6 of all 15]

"Nowhere does CFIT address the fact that, at this point in time, all
that ICANN and VeriSign have done is propose future price limits for
.COM domain names, which cannot be implemented until the DOC approves
the .COM Extension. (Mot. at 20-22.) And, as ICANN explained in its
opening brief, price caps in a single supplier market are considered
pro-competitive. (Mot. at 13-14.)" [page 8 of the document, line 14,
page 13 of all 15]

As Vint Cerf has said in regards to the "last mile":

http://judiciary.senate.gov/testimony.cfm?id=1937&wit_id=5416

"One can think of these safeguards collectively as constituting a ?Law
of Nondiscrimination? governing the Internet?s on-ramps The somewhat
paradoxical end result was a regulatory regime applied to underlying
last-mile facilities that allowed the Internet itself to remain open
and unregulated as designed. Indeed, it is hard to imagine the
innovation and creativity of the commercial Internet in the 1990s ever
occurring without those minimal but necessary market safeguards already
in place."

"In short, the broadband carriers will have every incentive to use
market power to squeeze Internetbased companies to pay for more than
just the network resources they actually use. Small businesses and
entrepreneurs in particular will suffer enormously under such a
scheme."

"Without Net Neutrality, Carriers Will Seek To Leverage Their Market
Power as
Gatekeepers to the Internet"

And the most lovely quote of all:

http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/07/17/HNnetneutralitypioneers_1.html?BROADBAND


"What's worse than a regulated monopoly? The answer is, an unregulated
monopoly."

Only someone with a very limited understanding of economics would
suggest that it is not ICANN's duty to regulate single-supplier markets
like registry operators. Unregulated monopolies are disastrous.

Sincerely,

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

P.S. Props to John Berryhill for bringing the last quote to my attention.