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"[...] it actually in practice meant essentially a word that you may not want to talk about in this phone call, let's say it begins with ASS and then goes further."

... and we are left guessing... (although it's ok here)

Because GoDaddy offered a wad of cash to Registerfly to buy their customers. (ICANN called it a "commercial transaction") Registerfly gets the cash they need to pay court fees, GoDaddy gets thousands of new customers (lots of revenue potential from renewals and add-ons), and registerfly customers get control of their domains back. A win-win-win deal, more or less.

They automatically swoop in to register domain names that people forget to renew, then sell it back to them at extortive prices.

I agree with most of your statements but this one is generally not possible. Reason being is that ICANN requires a Redeption Grace Period be given to all owners who let their domain expire, which usually lasts 30 days. This is in addition to a 30 day grace period given to the owner after a domain becomes expired, where they can buy it back at the normal renewal price. A total of 60 days for an owner to reclaim an expired domain. I feel this is all more than fair. If after all this time the owner doesn't reregister the domain, i have no problem with someone else buying it. However, the registrars themselves have first crack at buying it and many times do. They call it the "Extended Redemption Grace Period" where they try to sell it back to the owner at a higher price. Domains they don't sell back usually get auctioned off, at which point squatters can grab them.

These days the registrar "buys" any domains theit clients let expire. You can thank ICANN for this.

It's even worse than that. Most of the ICANN accredited "registrars" are domain squatters who paid the fee to become a registrar so they could get a bulk rate, bulk Whois access, and the ability to do "domain tasting". Really. Take a look at the list.

Some fun registrar names:

• Enom1 Inc., Enom2 Inc., Enom3, Inc. ... Enom371, Inc. ... Enom 465 Inc. (Enom seems to have these to support their resellers and domain squatters)
• Domainsinthebag.com LLC Domainsofcourse.com LLC Domainsoftheday.net LLC Domainsoftheworld.net LLC Domainsofvalue.com LLC Domainsouffle.com LLC Domainsoverboard.com LLC Domainsovereigns.com LLC (all fronts for NameScout)
• Klaatudomains.com LLC (another front for NameScout)
• NotSoFamousNames.com LLC (now there's a bottom feeder)
• Rerun Domains, Inc. (site is down)
• Soyouwantadomain.com LLC (goes directly to an ad site; they don't even make a pretense of being a real registrar)
• Threadbot.com, Inc. Threadexchange.com Threadfactory.com, Inc. Threadshare.com, Inc. Threadsupply.com, Inc. Threadtrade.com, Inc. Threadwalker.com, Inc. Threadwatch.com, Inc. Threadwise.com, Inc. (all fronts for "Club Drop")

It's worse than that. And it's all ICANN's fault.

ICANN has become a trade association for domain registrars. Which isn't surprising; they're the ones that pay it money.

A big problem is that registrars are allowed to speculate in domain names. ICANN has the power to prohibit this (see section 4.2 of the Registrar Agreement) but has not done so. To speculate in domain names, it helps to be a registrar, which isn't that expensive. ICANN's pricing starts at $4000/year. As a result, there are now about 800 "registrars", most of which are fronts for domain speculators. Most of them don't register domains for others at all.

As a result, ICANN's constituency is now composed primarily of typosquatting slimeballs. That's why we're in this mess.

It's worse than that. And it's all ICANN's fault.

ICANN has become a trade association for domain registrars. Which isn't surprising; they're the ones that pay it money.

A big problem is that registrars are allowed to speculate in domain names. ICANN has the power to prohibit this (see section 4.2 of the Registrar Agreement) but has not done so. To speculate in domain names, it helps to be a registrar, which isn't that expensive. ICANN's pricing starts at $4000/year. As a result, there are now about 800 "registrars", most of which are fronts for domain speculators. Most of them don't register domains for others at all.

As a result, ICANN's constituency is now composed primarily of typosquatting slimeballs. That's why we're in this mess.

The method for squashing "name tasting" (the expoitation of the five-day grace period) is well known: impose a small fee for each returned domain. The Public Interest Registry (maintainer of .org) recently became the first registry to impose such a fee of 5 cents per name. VeriSign has not followed suit. Some argue that this is because enough "tasted" domains are registered that the sales benefit from the practice outweighs the stress on the infrastructure. ICANN is requesting a position paper from a coalition of registrars on the topic.

How about the spamhaus.org incident? Should a single country's laws be allowed to lock-out a foreign company's ability to be present on the Internet?

Here is a little follow up. What microsoft should be doing is actually submitting the information to ICANN and not trying to sue under trademark. http://www.icann.org/dndr/udrp/policy.htm --- it is a violation of the rules of the registrar (adopted in 1999) under 4.a / 4.b.iv. So to clarify yes the people are in violation, but suing under trademark is the wrong way to do it.

With IDNs, the domain names stored in the DNS servers are ordinary domain names just like before. The names stored have no special properties that makes it possible for the DNS servers to single out the IDN domains. There is no reason to believe that IDNs would make the DNS system as a whole behave different from its normal behaviour. Nevertheless, for prudence ICANN has asked that it be tested that this assumption is true.

It's time for ICANN to invoke paragraph 3.2.3 of the Registrar Agreement. The Registrar then has ten days to provide a data dump of all their registrations, allowing bulk transfer of a failing registrar's data to another registrar.

To do a transfer between registrars you need to add a year to the registration term and charge another year of rego:

From the Policy on Transfer of Registrations between Registrars:

8. Effect on Term of Registration

The completion by Registry Operator of a holder-authorized transfer under this Part A shall result in a one-year extension of the existing registration, provided that in no event shall the total unexpired term of a registration exceed ten (10) years.

eNorm shouldn't be charging for transfers though since the Registrar of Record should remain unchanged.

ICANN-Accredited Registrars list is at
http://www.icann.org/registrars/accredited-list.ht ml
I personally use Melbourne IT. Which I got when I bought the TLD through those yahoo jerks (cheap though: $4.95/y)
They are so smart they attached a yahoo banner at the bottom of all my pages.
Workaround was to change the name servers; now using the free service at http://freedns.afraid.org/, rock-solid and free company.
Hope this can help

• .travel? Check
• .museum? Check!
• .aero? Check!
• .coop? Check!
• .sucks? Coming soon!

ICANN FAQ on Domain Registrar Problems.

ICANN Transfer Policies

ICANN Transfer Dispute Resolution Policy.

You may end up having to pay the miscreants a transfer fee. They do have to release registrar locks in a reasonable time with some reasonable process, though they can also hold the domain for 60 days after registration.

ICANN FAQ on Domain Registrar Problems.

ICANN Transfer Policies

ICANN Transfer Dispute Resolution Policy.

You may end up having to pay the miscreants a transfer fee. They do have to release registrar locks in a reasonable time with some reasonable process, though they can also hold the domain for 60 days after registration.

ICANN FAQ on Domain Registrar Problems.

ICANN Transfer Policies

ICANN Transfer Dispute Resolution Policy.

You may end up having to pay the miscreants a transfer fee. They do have to release registrar locks in a reasonable time with some reasonable process, though they can also hold the domain for 60 days after registration.

ICANN says no, http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-10 oct06.htm

...may be found here
In short: "We will not do it & we are not allowed to do it".

ICANN is the organization responsible for all domain registration. They were ordered to remove spamhous.org 's registration, and as the article says, have refused. The registrar that sponsors their domain, Tucows Inc., could still be ordered to cut their registration -- if that happens, watch your inbox for deluges of spam. If the registrar was GoDaddy or someone high profile like that, we'd probably be alright .... Tucows ... we're screwed.

read this:

http://www.spamhaus.org/legal/answer.lasso?ref=4

spamhaus know that the US courts can't touch them.

ICANN Know it too: "ICANN cannot comply with any order requiring it to suspend Spamhaus.org"
announcement

To quote TFA:

Even if ICANN were properly brought before the court in this matter, which ICANN has not been, ICANN cannot comply with any order requiring it to suspend or place a client hold on Spamhaus.org or any specific domain name because ICANN does not have either the ability or the authority to do so. Only the Internet registrar with whom the registrant has a contractual relationship - and in certain instances the Internet registry - can suspend an individual domain name.

ICANN are announcing it as a move to much more independance and emphasising LESS US-DOC control. Spin or PR? I dunno. the press-release is here

which has been refused a long time ago but would still be very useful in today's context.

I was the author of the CircleID article, and had submitted a slightly less technical version on Slashdot on Wednesday evening. It got rejected within 10 minutes. :) But, thankfully one can't keep a newsworthy story down, and there's coverage all over the place now. Please do post your comments to the official ICANN comments archive. ICANN will send you an email to authenticate your email address, so you'll need to click the link in that email for it to be confirmed (otherwise, your comments won't show up in the archives, but will instead be junked as spam).

ICANN who can hopefully use them to enhance the infrastructure of the Internet

I think you are confused about what ICANN actually does and who actually builds network infrastructure and what the internet actually is.

From ICANN's website:
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is an internationally organized, non-profit corporation that has responsibility for Internet Protocol (IP) address space allocation, protocol identifier assignment, generic (gTLD) and country code (ccTLD) Top-Level Domain name system management, and root server system management functions.

Or in other words they are a committee that works out naming & numbering procedures that a network needs to follow if they want to exchange traffic with other networks across a public network like the internet. ICANN does not build or maintain any physical infrastructure.

No single entity is responsible for "the infrastructure of the internet". The internet is a collection of individual networks all interconnected.

You are also confused about who is actually collecting the money from tier domain pricing. The money charged by the registar(a different entity than ICANN) for a domain is paid to the registar not to ICANN. ICANN only collects fees from registars for "certifying" them.

So let me get this right, I built a .org site that gets over 1.2 million hits a month. I make nothing from it and it essentially cost me money. Other people find the site valuable, so I continue to shell out the cash to keep it running.

So ICANN wants to make it so that the register price my domain at what ever they want. So when when my domain comes up for renewal the registar could look at the stats on my site and decide to price the domain at some crazy amount. Essentially they can use my hardwork and effort against me to price me right out off the internet. If my .org domain requires me to pay more then about 100$ at renewal time then I will simply roll over and give it up.

The only thing protecting me is competition between registries, and the hope that they don't collude to fix prices.

You can send ICANN feedback regarding their proposed contracts:

http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-2- 28jul06.htm

But you must do so by monday.

They will certainly hear from me.

How would this affect the tiered internet propositions from the leading telecom companies?

I don't think it has any effect at all. What the telcoms are talking about is prioritizing traffic traversing their network which is a different animal altogether.

From the ICANN FAQ: ICANN is responsible for coordinating the management of the technical elements of the DNS to ensure universal resolvability so that all users of the Internet can find all valid addresses. It does this by overseeing the distribution of unique technical identifiers used in the Internet's operations, and delegation of Top-Level Domain names (such as .com, .info, etc.).
Other issues of concern to Internet users, such as the rules for financial transactions, Internet content control, unsolicited commercial email (spam), and data protection are outside the range of ICANN's mission of technical coordination.

Once you have a trademark on the domain that describes your stuff, you can make a cybersquatting complaint. If the domain owner is just parking the domain, under the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy that's considered "use in bad faith". Then you send a letter to the domain owner, threatening a UDRP proceeding.

(If it's a "private registration", the registrar will now "uncloak" the domain so fast your head will spin, because they don't want to be the party to a UDRP proceeding or lawsuit.)

At this point, either the other side will offer to sell you the domain for less than a UDRP costs ($1000), or you go forward to a mandatory UDRP proceeding, which is an instant win when you have the trademark.

FTA: http://forum.icann.org/lists/xxx-tld-agreement/ind ex.html

Gives a link to the emails sent ICANN about the XXX domain. The majority of the ones I read were from the XXX industry complaining how this was an encrochment on their freedom of speech. I didn't read one Fundy saying anything against this on religious convictions. I personally think a lot of people are making Fundies into the new Boogie Man. Try doing some reasearch instead of believing every skewed politcally motivated bs article you read on the internet.

If you read the actual ICANN news release, you will note at the bottom that the person to direct questions to is named Tanzanica King and is totally hot.

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="INSERT_RATING_HERE" region="US">

Those guidelines havent been enforced or followed for quite a while.

http://www.icann.org/faq/#regrules .org, .com, and .net have been unrestricted for quite a while .edu, .mil and .gov are still restricted tho.

I thought Verisign handled non-existent domains by redirecting them all to a "buy this name" ad page. Or is that just the non-typo names?

>
> So once you catch one of these typosquatters what
> do you do with them. Is it illegal ?
>

ICANN and most registrars say you must register domain names in good faith.

If your domain name is "typosquatted", send a mail to the owner to ask him to abandon the domain name (or transfer it to you, if you have the money to pay for another domain name -very obviously, do not pay anything to the current owner... who you'll have to pay is your own registrar to get the transfered domain name).

If he refuses, send a mail to its registrar.

If the registrar doesn't care, go here: http://www.icann.org/udrp/udrp.htm and be ready for some paperwork...

I did a search on ICAN for .xxx and what I found seems different that what the crowd says (that evil forces are trying to have xxx approuved or actually the opposite :-)

The proposal for .xxx is here apparently it is quite old since we are talking of 1994

Then there is a descritpion of the registry that should actually handling it, something called ICM

Apparently there is a further stage of the "test", you can find the announcement here it is June 05

And finally one of the many comments, of various type, basically it seems to me that there is not a clear cut idea if this is good or bad...

What I cannot find is a reference to what the article under scrutiny says, maybe it is just rumors ?

I did a search on ICAN for .xxx and what I found seems different that what the crowd says (that evil forces are trying to have xxx approuved or actually the opposite :-)

The proposal for .xxx is here apparently it is quite old since we are talking of 1994

Then there is a descritpion of the registry that should actually handling it, something called ICM

Apparently there is a further stage of the "test", you can find the announcement here it is June 05

And finally one of the many comments, of various type, basically it seems to me that there is not a clear cut idea if this is good or bad...

What I cannot find is a reference to what the article under scrutiny says, maybe it is just rumors ?

I did a search on ICAN for .xxx and what I found seems different that what the crowd says (that evil forces are trying to have xxx approuved or actually the opposite :-)

The proposal for .xxx is here apparently it is quite old since we are talking of 1994

Then there is a descritpion of the registry that should actually handling it, something called ICM

Apparently there is a further stage of the "test", you can find the announcement here it is June 05

And finally one of the many comments, of various type, basically it seems to me that there is not a clear cut idea if this is good or bad...

What I cannot find is a reference to what the article under scrutiny says, maybe it is just rumors ?

I did a search on ICAN for .xxx and what I found seems different that what the crowd says (that evil forces are trying to have xxx approuved or actually the opposite :-)

The proposal for .xxx is here apparently it is quite old since we are talking of 1994

Then there is a descritpion of the registry that should actually handling it, something called ICM

Apparently there is a further stage of the "test", you can find the announcement here it is June 05

And finally one of the many comments, of various type, basically it seems to me that there is not a clear cut idea if this is good or bad...

What I cannot find is a reference to what the article under scrutiny says, maybe it is just rumors ?

I absolutely agree. They do not follow proper ICANN protocol for transferring domains away from their service. When I called their customer service number to ask what the problem was, I gave them a link to the ICANN page describing this protocol. I asked them to tell me which legitimate reason they were using to deny my registration transfer. They hung up on me. The placed a seemingly arbitrary 60 day hold on my domains to prevent me from transferring my 12 domains away from them and now, two months later I finally have all of my domains transferred to another registrar. While I am paying a bit more ($9.95 vs. $8.95), at least I am not giving money to these jerks.

See the numbered list under section 3:

http://www.icann.org/transfers/policy-12jul04.htm

http://www.icann.org/topics/vrsn-settlement/board- statements-section1.html

"First, while some opposed the new registry agreement because of the terms of the "renewal" clause, in truth, the renewal clause in the new agreement is little changed from the 2001 .COM agreement. In 2001, ICANN agreed to give VeriSign a presumptive right of renewal for .COM in return for VeriSign's agreement to give up the right to operate .ORG and to agree to a competitive bidding process for the renewal of .NET. ICANN made that decision because it believed that it was very unlikely and not necessarily desirable that the .COM registry operator would change, absent very extreme circumstances, and thus conceding that point (in return for concessions by VeriSign that were viewed as having real value) was conceding very little as a practical matter. The new agreement, again as a practical matter, merely clarifies this point, and does not, in our judgment, make any substantive change. Thus, this is not a reason to oppose this new agreement."

Greed?

Maybe. The only estimate I've seen of total .org lookups per day is 390 million (6% of all root domain lookups) in 2002. I don't have any information on how many of those are served from caches before they hit the database server. Presumably they mostly fall into the very simple query for a very small amount of data category.

[I just submitted my initial comments on the ICANN-VeriSign revised settlement, although it takes a while for them to appear at http://forum.icann.org/lists/revised-settlement/ . See http://www.icann.org/topics/verisign-settlement.ht m for the revised settlement, and send your own comments to revised-settlement@icann.org]
Hello,

No matter how much lipstick you put on a pig, it's still a pig. My lips won't kiss that pig.

The revisions that were made to the proposed ICANN-VeriSign settlement were extremely minor, and the staff has, intentionally or unintentionally, misread and mischaracterized the public comments on the prior settlement proposal.

One of the most misleading lines was in the analysis of public comments, where someone (no staffer signed their name to the document, to take responsibility for it) summarized the feelings toward price increases as "Regarding registrants, there was some expression that there might be some negative effects due to the potential price increases, but, the majority across constituencies expressed that the increase in cost was negligible when compared to the value of a domain name registration." Most registrants, who are ultimately paying the bills for ICANN, registries, registrars, etc, were solidly against the price aspect of the proposed settlement. As I mentioned in my prior comments at:

http://forum.icann.org/lists/settlement-comments/m sg00000.html

competitive bidding for the .com registry would have brought the wholesale cost of .com domains to the $2/domain per year level, approximately, a 66%+ reduction in costs. Yet ICANN considers it a negotiating victory for consumers when there's no cost reduction at all, but instead an average price INCREASE per year of 4.7% (i.e. 2/3rds of 7%). In technology-based industries, price REDUCTIONS, due to economies of scale, are far more typical, yet ICANN somehow feels price increases are desirable. It makes no sense.

The only possible reason one could conclude that price INCREASES are the norm would be if the majority of VeriSign's costs are not technological. If the majority of VeriSign's costs consist of wining and dining ICANN staff at exotic locations around the world, I might begin to see your point....

The sale of traffic data provisions is unacceptable. Notice that the language specifically permits access to data on "non existent domain names" for "promoting the sale of domain names". In other words, if example.com is getting a lot of type-in traffic, and is unregistered, VeriSign could sell that data, thereby promoting low-cost cybersquatting (since a large percentage of those types of names are TM infringements, as various independent analysts of SiteFinder concluded. Instead of monetizing that traffic itself, VeriSign will monetize it indirectly. Furthermore, VeriSign will be able to see the traffic to individual domain names (e.g. to know whether eBay.com is getting more activity than Amazon.com, or more importantly, whether yourdomain.com is getting more DNS activity than yourcompetitor.com).

With regards to Appendix W requirements related to R&D expenditures (including universal WHOIS), there continues to be a total lack of transparency, due to ICANN's continuing refusal to disclose the annual reports of VeriSign. I did a search of the 2001 main agreement at:

http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/verisign/regi stry-agmt-com-25may01.htm

and the word "confidential" appears a total of ZERO times. The number of times the word "private" is also ZERO. Yet, somehow, we are led to believe that ICANN can't release these annual reports? Why? Yet,

[I just submitted my initial comments on the ICANN-VeriSign revised settlement, although it takes a while for them to appear at http://forum.icann.org/lists/revised-settlement/ . See http://www.icann.org/topics/verisign-settlement.ht m for the revised settlement, and send your own comments to revised-settlement@icann.org]
Hello,

No matter how much lipstick you put on a pig, it's still a pig. My lips won't kiss that pig.

The revisions that were made to the proposed ICANN-VeriSign settlement were extremely minor, and the staff has, intentionally or unintentionally, misread and mischaracterized the public comments on the prior settlement proposal.

One of the most misleading lines was in the analysis of public comments, where someone (no staffer signed their name to the document, to take responsibility for it) summarized the feelings toward price increases as "Regarding registrants, there was some expression that there might be some negative effects due to the potential price increases, but, the majority across constituencies expressed that the increase in cost was negligible when compared to the value of a domain name registration." Most registrants, who are ultimately paying the bills for ICANN, registries, registrars, etc, were solidly against the price aspect of the proposed settlement. As I mentioned in my prior comments at:

http://forum.icann.org/lists/settlement-comments/m sg00000.html

competitive bidding for the .com registry would have brought the wholesale cost of .com domains to the $2/domain per year level, approximately, a 66%+ reduction in costs. Yet ICANN considers it a negotiating victory for consumers when there's no cost reduction at all, but instead an average price INCREASE per year of 4.7% (i.e. 2/3rds of 7%). In technology-based industries, price REDUCTIONS, due to economies of scale, are far more typical, yet ICANN somehow feels price increases are desirable. It makes no sense.

The only possible reason one could conclude that price INCREASES are the norm would be if the majority of VeriSign's costs are not technological. If the majority of VeriSign's costs consist of wining and dining ICANN staff at exotic locations around the world, I might begin to see your point....

The sale of traffic data provisions is unacceptable. Notice that the language specifically permits access to data on "non existent domain names" for "promoting the sale of domain names". In other words, if example.com is getting a lot of type-in traffic, and is unregistered, VeriSign could sell that data, thereby promoting low-cost cybersquatting (since a large percentage of those types of names are TM infringements, as various independent analysts of SiteFinder concluded. Instead of monetizing that traffic itself, VeriSign will monetize it indirectly. Furthermore, VeriSign will be able to see the traffic to individual domain names (e.g. to know whether eBay.com is getting more activity than Amazon.com, or more importantly, whether yourdomain.com is getting more DNS activity than yourcompetitor.com).

With regards to Appendix W requirements related to R&D expenditures (including universal WHOIS), there continues to be a total lack of transparency, due to ICANN's continuing refusal to disclose the annual reports of VeriSign. I did a search of the 2001 main agreement at:

http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/verisign/regi stry-agmt-com-25may01.htm

and the word "confidential" appears a total of ZERO times. The number of times the word "private" is also ZERO. Yet, somehow, we are led to believe that ICANN can't release these annual reports? Why? Yet,

[I just submitted my initial comments on the ICANN-VeriSign revised settlement, although it takes a while for them to appear at http://forum.icann.org/lists/revised-settlement/ . See http://www.icann.org/topics/verisign-settlement.ht m for the revised settlement, and send your own comments to revised-settlement@icann.org]
Hello,

No matter how much lipstick you put on a pig, it's still a pig. My lips won't kiss that pig.

The revisions that were made to the proposed ICANN-VeriSign settlement were extremely minor, and the staff has, intentionally or unintentionally, misread and mischaracterized the public comments on the prior settlement proposal.

One of the most misleading lines was in the analysis of public comments, where someone (no staffer signed their name to the document, to take responsibility for it) summarized the feelings toward price increases as "Regarding registrants, there was some expression that there might be some negative effects due to the potential price increases, but, the majority across constituencies expressed that the increase in cost was negligible when compared to the value of a domain name registration." Most registrants, who are ultimately paying the bills for ICANN, registries, registrars, etc, were solidly against the price aspect of the proposed settlement. As I mentioned in my prior comments at:

http://forum.icann.org/lists/settlement-comments/m sg00000.html

competitive bidding for the .com registry would have brought the wholesale cost of .com domains to the $2/domain per year level, approximately, a 66%+ reduction in costs. Yet ICANN considers it a negotiating victory for consumers when there's no cost reduction at all, but instead an average price INCREASE per year of 4.7% (i.e. 2/3rds of 7%). In technology-based industries, price REDUCTIONS, due to economies of scale, are far more typical, yet ICANN somehow feels price increases are desirable. It makes no sense.

The only possible reason one could conclude that price INCREASES are the norm would be if the majority of VeriSign's costs are not technological. If the majority of VeriSign's costs consist of wining and dining ICANN staff at exotic locations around the world, I might begin to see your point....

The sale of traffic data provisions is unacceptable. Notice that the language specifically permits access to data on "non existent domain names" for "promoting the sale of domain names". In other words, if example.com is getting a lot of type-in traffic, and is unregistered, VeriSign could sell that data, thereby promoting low-cost cybersquatting (since a large percentage of those types of names are TM infringements, as various independent analysts of SiteFinder concluded. Instead of monetizing that traffic itself, VeriSign will monetize it indirectly. Furthermore, VeriSign will be able to see the traffic to individual domain names (e.g. to know whether eBay.com is getting more activity than Amazon.com, or more importantly, whether yourdomain.com is getting more DNS activity than yourcompetitor.com).

With regards to Appendix W requirements related to R&D expenditures (including universal WHOIS), there continues to be a total lack of transparency, due to ICANN's continuing refusal to disclose the annual reports of VeriSign. I did a search of the 2001 main agreement at:

http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/verisign/regi stry-agmt-com-25may01.htm

and the word "confidential" appears a total of ZERO times. The number of times the word "private" is also ZERO. Yet, somehow, we are led to believe that ICANN can't release these annual reports? Why? Yet,

[I just submitted my initial comments on the ICANN-VeriSign revised settlement, although it takes a while for them to appear at http://forum.icann.org/lists/revised-settlement/ . See http://www.icann.org/topics/verisign-settlement.ht m for the revised settlement, and send your own comments to revised-settlement@icann.org]
Hello,

No matter how much lipstick you put on a pig, it's still a pig. My lips won't kiss that pig.

The revisions that were made to the proposed ICANN-VeriSign settlement were extremely minor, and the staff has, intentionally or unintentionally, misread and mischaracterized the public comments on the prior settlement proposal.

One of the most misleading lines was in the analysis of public comments, where someone (no staffer signed their name to the document, to take responsibility for it) summarized the feelings toward price increases as "Regarding registrants, there was some expression that there might be some negative effects due to the potential price increases, but, the majority across constituencies expressed that the increase in cost was negligible when compared to the value of a domain name registration." Most registrants, who are ultimately paying the bills for ICANN, registries, registrars, etc, were solidly against the price aspect of the proposed settlement. As I mentioned in my prior comments at:

http://forum.icann.org/lists/settlement-comments/m sg00000.html

competitive bidding for the .com registry would have brought the wholesale cost of .com domains to the $2/domain per year level, approximately, a 66%+ reduction in costs. Yet ICANN considers it a negotiating victory for consumers when there's no cost reduction at all, but instead an average price INCREASE per year of 4.7% (i.e. 2/3rds of 7%). In technology-based industries, price REDUCTIONS, due to economies of scale, are far more typical, yet ICANN somehow feels price increases are desirable. It makes no sense.

The only possible reason one could conclude that price INCREASES are the norm would be if the majority of VeriSign's costs are not technological. If the majority of VeriSign's costs consist of wining and dining ICANN staff at exotic locations around the world, I might begin to see your point....

The sale of traffic data provisions is unacceptable. Notice that the language specifically permits access to data on "non existent domain names" for "promoting the sale of domain names". In other words, if example.com is getting a lot of type-in traffic, and is unregistered, VeriSign could sell that data, thereby promoting low-cost cybersquatting (since a large percentage of those types of names are TM infringements, as various independent analysts of SiteFinder concluded. Instead of monetizing that traffic itself, VeriSign will monetize it indirectly. Furthermore, VeriSign will be able to see the traffic to individual domain names (e.g. to know whether eBay.com is getting more activity than Amazon.com, or more importantly, whether yourdomain.com is getting more DNS activity than yourcompetitor.com).

With regards to Appendix W requirements related to R&D expenditures (including universal WHOIS), there continues to be a total lack of transparency, due to ICANN's continuing refusal to disclose the annual reports of VeriSign. I did a search of the 2001 main agreement at:

http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/verisign/regi stry-agmt-com-25may01.htm

and the word "confidential" appears a total of ZERO times. The number of times the word "private" is also ZERO. Yet, somehow, we are led to believe that ICANN can't release these annual reports? Why? Yet,

Vint Cerf is still the Chair of ICANN (unless their web site is out of date). I imagine he has at least some pull in determining ICANN policy, which does affect the Internet on a day-to-day basis.

And so a method was devised by Washington and ICANN to ensure that the rules could be bent. And so they have been. As a result no one single soul is better off, and governments have been given control over the internet by the backdoor. Now you know.

Control of Iraq's domain was far more complicated however. The .iq domain was registered instead to two brothers living in the US. The Elashi brothers and other members of their family at the time were also in US jail awaiting trial for funding terrorists - which in the end amounted to shipping computer parts to Libya and Syria and for which they all received hefty sentences.

Principles for Delegation and Administration of ccTLDs Presented by Governmental Advisory Committee

The relevant section (I think) says:

7.1 Where a communication between the relevant government or public authority and the delegee is in place, when ICANN is notified by the relevant government or public authority that the delegee has contravened the terms of the communication, or the term of the designation has expired, ICANN should act with the utmost promptness to reassign the delegation in coordination with the relevant government or public authority.

(a) Delegation of a New Top Level Domain. Delegation of a new top level domain requires the completion of a number of procedures, including the identification of a TLD manager with the requisite skills and authority to operate the TLD appropriately. The desires of the government of a country with regard to delegation of a ccTLD are taken very seriously. The IANA will make them a major consideration in any TLD delegation/transfer discussions. Significantly interested parties in the domain should agree that the proposed TLD manager is the appropriate party. The key requirement is that for each domain there be a designated manager for supervising that domain's name space. In the case of ccTLDs, this means that there is a manager that supervises the domain names and operates the domain name system in that country. There must be Internet Protocol (IP) connectivity to the nameservers and electronic mail connectivity to the entire management, staff, and contacts of the manager. There must be an administrative contact and a technical contact for each domain. The administrative contact must reside in the country involved for ccTLDs. The IANA may choose to make partial delegations of a TLD when circumstances, such as those in a developing country, so dictate. It may also authorize a "proxy" DNS service outside of a developing country as a temporary form of assistance to the creation of Internet connectivity in new areas. [N.B. The IANA continues to receive inquiries about delegation of new gTLDs. This is a significant policy issue on which ICANN will conduct a careful study and review based on the established decision making procedures. Information about this study will be disseminated on the website at icann.org.]