Re: [ga] ICANN Board unanimously approves .biz/.info/.org registry agreements by 13-0

[Jeff Williams <jwkckid1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Karl and all,

  Here here Karl.  But standing up for what is best, fair and/or right
for registrants/stakeholders,has no value add in terms of $$'s for
ICANN.

Karl Auerbach wrote:

> Roberto Gaetano wrote:
>
> > You might disagree, but one of the guiding factors for the Board is
> > uniformity of treatment for all participants.
>
> Why?
>
> There are TLD operators who obtained their position by inheriting a
> captive customer base from the days before ICANN.  These are the .com,
> .org, .net, .edu TLDs.
>
> Many of the folks in those TLDs never had a choice, their choice of TLD
> was dictated by the appropriate use policies that were the norm some
> time back.
>
> And then there are TLDs that came along under ICANN; every person in
> them entered those names completely voluntarily.
>
> There is a difference - those of us who are captives in .com and .org
> require protection from predatory practices.  We never had a choice.
>
> Those who are entering the new TLDs have a choice (albeit because of
> ICANN's policies a choice that often provides very little that is really
> different).
>
> So, there is reason for different treatment.
>
> Moreover, only Verisign among the TLD registries operates with a very
> old, but still alive agreement with NTIA.  That, too, is a significant
> reason for treating Verisign apples differently than the other TLD oranges.
>
> For the future, ICANN really needs to relax its straitjacket on what
> TLDs can do and how they structure their offerings - only then will
> there be real "competition".  But along the way, ICANN should remember
> that there are a lot of us who are locked-in, and have been locked-in,
> since years before there was a Network Solutions, before there was a
> Verisign, and before there was an ICANN.
>
> I think also that the provisions in the ICANN-Verisign agreement were
> forced upon ICANN (or rather, ICANN acquiesced to them without a fight)
> during litigation.
>
> What virtue is there in replicating those ill-provisions, such as
> registry fees that are based on no accounting whatsoever of the cost of
> performing registry transactions, to other TLDs?  Is it the position of
> ICANN that a mistake once done is worth repeating?  Might it better if
> ICANN were to aspire to learn and improve with each experience rather
> than descending to the lowest common denominator?
>
>                 --karl--
>
>                 --karl--

Regards,
--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 134k members/stakeholders strong!)
"Obedience of the law is the greatest freedom" -
   Abraham Lincoln

"Credit should go with the performance of duty and not with what is
very often the accident of glory" - Theodore Roosevelt

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liability depends upon whether B is less than L multiplied by
P: i.e., whether B is less than PL."
United States v. Carroll Towing  (159 F.2d 169 [2d Cir. 1947]
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