One of the better side stories of yesterday's Congressional hearing on ICANN concerned Congressman Dingell's 5-minute intervention (see ~1:49:00 into the video) during witness questioning. In addition to raising the expected inquires into the expiration of the JPA, he also asked the witnesses their opinions concerning the 2006 ICANN-VeriSign negotiation of the .com contract.
When the witnesses were asked if the contract “suffered from a lack of transparency,” he got the expected answers. ICANN's CEO Paul Twomey, pointing out the contract was publicly available, said “no.” Ken Silva of VeriSign agreed. Go Daddy, VeriSign's largest customer, argued to the contrary. Yes, Christine Jones said, the contract was publicly available, but it was the secrecy-shrouded process that led up to it that was cause for concern, and that Go Daddy didn't agree with the outcome.
Apparently this concern is justified. Today, a 9th Circuit Appeals Court ruling indirectly supported Go Daddy's suspicions in its reversal of an earlier decision made in Plaintiff Coalition for ICANN Transparency (“CFIT”) vs. VeriSign. In the 2005 case, the CFIT, an organization composed of participants in the Internet domain name system, including website owners, filed a complaint in the Northern District Court against VeriSign, the operator of the “.com” and “.net” domain name registries.
CFIT's complaint alleged the defendant engaged in conspiracy in restraint of trade in connection with the terms of the .com and .net contracts’ pricing and renewal provisions. In essence, CFIT sought to show that the .com and .net domain name prices were artificially high and that the contract renewal provisions VeriSign had negotiated with ICANN wrongfully restrained competition. In addition, CFIT alleged that VeriSign’s conduct in obtaining the anti-competitive provisions constituted monopolization or attempted monopolization of the .com and .net registration markets.
Despite the seriousness of the allegations, the District Court eventually dismissed the action with prejudice. However, today's Appeals Court reversal could be characterized as an almost complete affirmation of CFITs original allegations:
1. The Court concluded that CFIT adequately alleged a Section 1 violation of the Sherman Anti-trust Act. According to the Court, “CFIT has adequately pled the existence of a conspiracy between VeriSign and ICANN, and that VeriSign had the intent to restrain trade when it entered into the .com contract.” “VeriSign and ICANN undertook concerted action to restrain trade by imposing prices higher than market rate and under conditions hostile to competition.”
2. Furthermore, the Court concluded that “CFIT has adequately alleged that VeriSign’s improper coercion of ICANN and attempts to control ICANN’s operations in its own favor violated Section 2 [of the Sherman Anti-trust Act].”
Obviously, this is bad news for VeriSign, and only slightly better news for ICANN. Time will tell if the allegations prove out. But the successful application of antitrust arguments to regulation of the domain name industry is good news for the Internet.
Verisign and ICANN must be laughing all the way to their next golf outing with Jones Day. They LOVE to be on the hook. That makes them essential and relevant. Verisign will now be able to RAISE domain name prices because of their rising legal fees to defend themselves. It is all theatre.
As for those new TLDs ? Ah yes, well, forget those.
Verisign and ICANN are now distracted by some horrible lawsuits and will not have time to encourage any competition. If any new TLDs do slip
thru the cracks, Verisign and ICANN will of course be natural partners and the registry contract will of course go to Verisign to maintain stability, etc.
Also, the JPA has the same impact. If it continues
ICANN will argue they have to spend their time
making sure their Report Card with the U.S. DOC
has all A+ scores. ICANN will not have time to
manage new registries. If there is no JPA, then
Verisign and Jones Day can help ICANN make up
a range of excuses why there is no time to have
more .COMpetition. A rebid of the .COM contract
will never be part of the plan. There is no time for
that. Verisign and ICANN are too busy playing
golf and laughing all the way to the bank.
The Canadians behind CFIT and .XXX would be
better off getting their government to face off
against the U.S. Government by deploying a
duplicate collection of .COM servers. That would
increase the reliability and stability of .COM.
That would also show that .COM domain names
could be hosted for about 10 cents per year.
The Registrars do all of the heavy lifting and
make very little money. Verisign helped ICANN
develop their bylaws to ensure that outcome.
ICANN is a division of Verisign. It is all a sham.
While Verisign and ICANN's lawyers are laughing all the way to the bank. The Vixie Clique continues wrote:
to play Whack-a-Mole games with people. It must
be nice pulling millions each year out of the
non-profit scams while playing all day on lists.
Start here – A simple question is asked
http://ops.ietf.org/lists/namedroppers/namedroppers.2009/msg01065.html
If we're worried about overloading the root servers, why not advocate
more caches download the root zone out of band?
===========
> because it goes stale, and gets deliberately amended, leading to chaos.
there are plans to significantly change the dynamic on/in
the root zone. designing a stratagy that presumes a fairly
small, static root zone might be short sighted.
=====
On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 5:48 PM, Paul Vixie
> does iana want the rootops to start pulling the root zone from that server?
No. Open source software distributors have figured out how to
efficiently mirror files much, much larger than the root zone. The
root zone operators should follow their model.
=====
Well, I'm told IANA doesn't exist, so it would be difficult for it to want anything. I'm also told the root servers were independent and thus, even if IANA were to exist, the root servers operators would do what they thought best for the communities they believe they serve regardless of what anyone else wants.
Here come the NEW JPA Rules….
TERM LIMITS ON ICANN STAFF JOBS
Anyone that has been on the ICANN Staff for more than
4 years had better be looking for a new .JOB. The U.S.
Government is now going to be asking why so many
ICANN staffers seem to be retired in place. ICANN .JOBS.
will also go with new elected administrations in Washington
and Sacramento. They will become part of the DOC, NIST
and FCC patronage positions.
NEW AMERICAN ICANN CEO WITH INTERNATIONAL ROOTS
The Ex-Gov of CaleeForNeeAh Arnold Da Terminator is slated
to become the new CEO of ICANN. He will be adding more
Danish Pastry to the ICANN Staff.
NEW ICANN BUDGET TO ATTRACT MORE DC OVERSIGHT
According to Twomey, the U.S. Government wants the ICANN
budget to double to about $200 million per year, to handle
the Staff they want to appoint. Until the budget reaches one
billion dollars, they will not be able to get the Senate's
attention. Order more Danish Pastry.
IANA TO MOVE TO THE FCC FOR PROPER SPECTRUM MANAGEMENT
Many /8s remain to be allocated. The U.S. FCC will be helping
to auction that SPECTRUM. SPECTRUM is SPECTRUM. People
may finally see what a /8 is really worth. The telcos and
cablecos get their /8s directly from ICANN, the FCC's contractor. The swamp will be drained. RIPE.NET will no
longer be the ASO mailing list manager at ICANN. The FCC
will manage the run on the /8s which will be /12s. With /12s
the IANA pie will be cut into more pieces. Canada may get
a slice of the pie AFTER Cuba, Iran, and North Korea.
MORE NEW JPA RULES
LIST ALL ICANN STAFFER SALARIES AND STATUS
The ICANN CEO is not even an employee. He is
paid via his off-shore tax haven. President Obama
pledged to shut those down for Americans. Ah,
the ICANN CEO is not even an American citizen.
How many other ICANN Staffers are contractors ?
Local school systems in the U.S. post all teacher's salaries. Since ICANN exists to serve the U.S.
Government, why doesn't it follow the same rules?
ALL FOIA REQUESTS JUST LIKE THE U.S. GOVERNMENT
Why can't people do FOIA requests to obtain any
ICANN documents and emails ?
FOIA – Freedom Of Information Act
DOCUMENT ON-LINE WHAT EVERY ICANN STAFFER DOES ALL DAY
What do all of the ICANN staffers do when “working at home” ?
Are they really at the local health club ?
Where are the time-records ?
HAVE AN ON-LINE ICANN ORGANIZATION CHART
Who reports to who at ICANN ?
What do all those people do ? [Very Little ?]
LIST CONFLICTS OF INTEREST OF ICANN BOARD MEMBERS
As an example, Steve Crocker's company is
contracted by the U.S. Government to deploy
DNSSEC. Does that influence ICANN to do that ?
ICANN Claims to be Open and Transparent but
ICANN itself is not that way, only the groupies
that surround ICANN. The people in the ICANN
clubs and cliques are not open and transparent.
http://domainnamewire.com/2009/06/07/dennis-carlton-agrees-with-dennis-carlton-about-new-domain-names/
Dennis Carlton Agrees with Dennis Carlton About New Domain Names
Sunday, June 7th, 2009
ICANN releases two new papers from Professor Dennis Carlton regarding the economic consequences of releasing new top level domain names.
Surprise! When you pay the same person to evaluate critical comments about his original work, he decides that his original work was correct.
That’s what happened when Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) paid Professor Dennis Carlton to evaluate (defend) critiques of his original papers. ICANN just released two new papers by Carlton that refute critiques of his original reports.
JULY 2010 – Another YEAR wasted?
The Canadians behind CFIT and .XXX would be
better off getting their government to face off
against the U.S. Government by deploying a
duplicate collection of .COM servers. That would
increase the reliability and stability of .COM.
The Canadians behind CFIT and .XXX would be
better off getting their government to face off
against the U.S. Government by deploying a
duplicate collection of .COM servers. That would
increase the reliability and stability of .COM.