ICANN Asks for Verisign Lawsuit Dismissal

morelife writes "ICANN has asked the court to send Verisign a cancellation on their recent lawsuit (breach of contract, violation of the Sherman Act (antitrust), essentially making the point that their interpretation of the contract is different from Verisign's interpretation of it. The story is covered at CircleID ..."

Comments

Re:Antitrust

[squiggleslash]

If this is true, then a great many government agencies are violating anti-trust laws: the IRS, the INS, the FCC, the FTC, all have monopolies in their relevent fields.

Of course, ultimately it's not true. To begin with, while you hint that you might be talking about constitutional issues, you raise the specific allegation that ICANN is violating anti-trust laws, these laws are the creation of Congress and Congress certainly has the right to overturn or modify its own laws.

Nor, constitutionally, does there appear to be anything wrong with ICANN. ICANN doesn't even really have a monopoly on anything, it's merely the designated trusted authority. If ISPs decided to opt-out of ICANN's rulings, there is no legal force available to require them to change direction. We can, if we choose to, set up an alternative DNS system. Congress's role with ICANN has been to ensure an independent body is funded, not to force the Internet to obey it.

And you're wrong about what Congress can and cannot do. Congress has passed many laws over the years which have been upheld by the courts despite having nothing to do with copyright law. Even if Congress was limited to creating only those monopolies mentioned explicitly in the Constitution (which would be bogus, because the Constitution gives Congress many authorities, such as the ability to regulate interstate commerce - it doesn't forbid the creation of monopolies under those circumstances), you forgot to include the Post Office.

Verisign == scum

[0x0d0a]

What are you *talking* about?

ICANN handles standards -- Internet names and numbers. There's *always* a single ultimate organization in place to do this sort of thing. Is *ANSI* a monopoly? ISO?

Furthermore, ICANN hasn't been trying to leverage their position to make money, *as Verisign has*. Heck, ICANN's had numerous funding problems over the past few years, whereas Verisign has been funneling vast amounts of money into itself over that same period of time.

There is *exactly* one organization involved that has been abusing its unique, monopoly position (root name servers) in the past year, and that is very specifically Verisign (bleeding sitefinder). There was mass outcry, and ICANN responded, telling Verisign that Verisign was running amok and risking cancellation of its special, unique privileges.

It boggles the mind that ICANN (which isn't perfect, and *is* admittedly influenced by businesses) is being accused by *Verisign* (the most awful collection of monopolistic business scum you could get your hands on) of abuse of a monopoly position.

I just can't imagine a person siding *with* Verisign and against ICANN on something like this. Christ. It's insane.

Re:Antitrust

[pdcryan]

I simply don't agree.

Congress has plenty of power here to do what it pleases. They have a "monopoly" over interstate commerce, to begin with. ICANN is basically a public utility, that the department of commerce oversees. Think of them as the internet gas company. They can do what they wish, but like the gas company they have a restrictive tarriff (in the form of a contract with the DoC, a memorandum of understanding with the DoC and a cooperative research agreement). The DoC can review ICANN's actions (though they haven't found the need to get) and enforce their agreements with them, much like a Board of Public Utilities would oversee a natural monopoly like the gas company.

A really good read would be ICANN and AntiTrust (2003 U. Ill. L. Rev. 1). There could be some ANtiTrust issues with ICANN now - but not the basic "it's an illegal monopoly" claims you're talking about. If they were trying to use their legitimate monopoly to break into other markets where they don't have a monopoly (much like VeriSign is doing with SiteFinder - using their registry monopoly to break into the portal and search markets) that would be a different story (a Sherman 2 story).

I also don't see how ICANN can be given back to the people... I guess that would mean the National Science Foundation? In my opinion ICANN is much more open and willing to change than the NSF ever was (noting the additional top level domains we now have).