ICANN Releases New .com Contract

truthsearch writes "The Register is reporting that ICANN has released a revised contract for all dotcoms. The new revision hopes to bring an end to the huge legal fights surrounding the core of the Internet. From the article: 'Significant changes have been made to the deal - which will hand control of all dotcom domains to current owner VeriSign until 2012 - following widespread criticism from the Internet industry. Changes include limits on VeriSign's price-rising powers, reduced scope for VeriSign to sell personalized data to third-parties, and marginally increased control over VeriSign's ability to introduce changes to the existing dotcom business model.'"

Comments

Alleviate legal concerns?

[dada21]

I'm not sure if it will truly be possible to alleviate legal concerns regarding ICANN and management of the domain name system. ICANN is one of those pseudo-government entities that is fairly impervious to legal mandates it seems. Sure, we hear that changes will be made, but who is reaping the benefit of these changes?

In most situations where there is true competitive (closer to a free market than a regulated one), the end user AND the service/product provider both profit from the competition. Any changes that are made are done so to favor the user -- you don't see price increases in a truly competitive market unless there is a real supply or demand curve change. You also don't see products getting shoddier for no reason. Most things that occur in a free market of competition occur because the customer demands it, and the provider much make the changes or they'll lose out to the providers who will accept the future.

ICANN doesn't have to embrace any changes based on their monopoly status. Just as we had a telephone monopoly in the US for decades (to the disadvantage of the consumer), we're seeing the same things happening with ICANN -- a lot of political wrangling, promises to do better, and guarantees that the bad days are long gone.

Guess what? Nothing will change. The biggest way to change a bad company is to scare them out of their mind that someone will come and provide the same product or service in a cheaper way, faster, or at a higher quality.

What about domain name protections ?!?!

[GamesNET]

It's obvious the "business" of TLD's is what drives ICANN. It's a shame there is not a way to force ICANN to enact reasonable domain name protections, a functional domain dispute process, or a method to assist victims of Domain Hijacks directly (re: gamesnet.net). Following the gamesnet.net domain hijack, ICANN refused to get involved in any way. Although GTE's domain hijack got immediate attention and quick resolve. I've been advised it would take a class action lawsuit to obtain their attention. However, their status in the state of California protects them from this as well.

FYI : Alternative DNS Root

[mpapet]

Widipedia has a nice summary of the alternative DNS roots.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root