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ICANN/Verisign Sued For Monopoly Abuse
Andy_R writes "The BBC is reporting that the World Association of Domain Name Developers (WADND) have filed suit against ICANN and Verisign for alleged violations of antitrust, conspiracy, monopolization and price fixing laws. The suit alleges that the two are entering an unlawful agreement that gives VeriSign a permanent monopoly over the all .com and .net domain name registrations, and the right to raise prices at 7% per annum forever. The text of the lawsuit is available as a .pdf from WADND." ZDNet has the story as well.
I'm fairly sure that the sub-registrars you go through (godaddy.com, regsiter.com, etc.) are just middle men.
I was quoted out of context in my autobiography...
Is there any interantional court? Geneva? US? UN? Japan? we are talking about whole earth...
Closest thing would be the International Court of Justice run by the UN.
I strongly considered this right after receiving my computer science degree. I actually have a friend who is going down this road. Nevertheless, I interned in the IT department of a smallish (but hugely successful) law firm one summer in college and befriended many of the lawyers in the office, including one of the founders.
Every single one of them recommended staying out of law if you desire to have any sort of life. It is very difficult to be married and try to practice law (at least private law where you're trying your darndest to acquire clients and win their cases). I think it really depends what you want. These lawyers were all making millions per year (the partners were splitting 8-figure profits every year). They were also working at least 80 hours per week.
I have a job I love right now, and while I'm not making that kind of buck, I get to spend a lot of time with my family (and I just had a baby girl, so I love to be home!). I'm not getting an ulcer or going crazy from sleep deprevation, and that has to be worth something.
Again, it all depends on your goals. But if you want that lifestyle, get into it now, because if you don't do it now you'll probably never have a chance to switch later.
CFIT appears to be much less of "fuckweasels" to me.
SPF support for most open source mail servers can be found at libspf2.
The United Nation is not a for-profit organization? Really?
were arrested over bribery involving millions of dollars
in which one U.N. staffer, Alexander Yakovlev, was convicted in a Manhattan federal court this past August
step down from his post Monday amid allegations that he and the governing
Bailey's Compass Sacks Three Execs In UN Scandal
Germany Shocked by Damning Report On UN Scandal
More?
I think you are confused. The two different(?)groups suing ICANN (CFIT and WADND) don't appear to have anything to do with the EU and their complaints about ICANN and the US government control of ICANN. ICANN has made many enemies over the years.
That said, the Verisign agreement may well be related to the complaints by the EU. Part of this agreement between ICANN and Verisign calls for Verisign to support ICANN in the squabble over the US control over ICANN. Remeber, ICANN has made many enemies over the years and has few friends. Buying Verisign off by giving them the .COM zone forever may have been what ICANN felt the needed to do to prevent themselves from losing all control. Also remember that, after sitting unresolved for a long time, this agreement came about right after the EU vs ICANN squabble heated up.
I'm REALLY having a hard deciding who scares me more to have control over the top level domains: ICANN or the UN.
SPF support for most open source mail servers can be found at libspf2.
As an employee of one small .com Registrar I would rather support WADND in this case. ICANN and
Verisign are a bunch of greedy lazy bastards. ICANN earns 25 cents per year per every .com/.net domain name (so called ICANN tax - basically for nothing, they only perform Registrar accreditations),
and Verisign takes 6 bucks for maintaining .com/.net Registry. But there other ICANN taxes, which
are not so widely visible to general public. ICANN charges all .com/.net Registrars $20k a year just
for the right to register .com/.net domains (plus 25 cents tax for each domain), last year that
annual ICANN tax was 5 times lower (around $4k). So basically small guys on the domain market are
now in much more difficult conditions, because profit margins have significantly decreased in
last few years, some Registrars have a profit margin of 25 cents per domain name. That is you have
to register or renew at least 80,000 domains a year just to pay all ICANN taxes, that is not counting
labour costs etc. Basically as a result of ICANN actions domain registration business has been closed for small guys, it is now not possible to enter this business without shitloads of money. It was deliberate
action of ICANN, they even planned in their annual budget a descrease of Registrar number from
500 to around 200.
Are you that dense? The whole scandal was about corporations and businesses bribing Saddam Hussein in order to get oil deals from him when the U.N. program restricted Iraq's oil exports to exchanges for humanitarian aid. The corporations and CEO's responsible for the scandal undermined the U.N.'s resolution. The key players who benefited from the scandal were Siemens, Daimler Chrysler, Volvo, atleast one Halliburton firm and more than 2000 other companies. It was a corporate scandal if anything.
"Companies buying oil at cut prices would funnel extra money to Iraq through "surcharges" while those receiving money from Iraq for humanitarian goods and services would return a portion in "kickbacks", the report found." -- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4440804.stm>
You can read more details here as well: http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/27792/