___________________________________________________________________________
____
This message is intended for the individual or entity named above. If you
are not the intended
recipient, please do not read, copy, use or disclose this communication to
others; also please
notify the sender by replying to this message, and then delete it from
your system. Thank you.
___________________________________________________________________________
____
In the interests of full disclosure, I am the outside lawyer for ICANN.
This was a good job of regurgitating the NSI story, but it was a little
short on accuracy. ICANN is hardly operating "under the vague auspices of
the Commerce Department;" Commerce in fact went through two rounds of
extensive public comment before inviting the Internet community to form
what became ICANN, and it ultimately entered into a Memorandum of
Understanding with ICANN that clearly sets forth the relationship. All
this information is available on the DOC/NTIA website if you had bothered
to look. And it is not ICANN's members who "claim" that they are charged
with ending NSI's monopoly -- it is the DOC documents and the agreements
that NSI has entered into with DOC that set forth that goal. (By the way,
the notion that NSI was doing this on its own before this process started
is a joke; would you like to buy a bridge? When was the last monopoly you
know of that voluntarily introduced competition?) You go on to say that
"records of their meetings are not public;" this is simply not true, and
the fact that you were apparently told this should make you worry about
accuracy of the other things that NSI or its agents told you. The minutes
of all meetings are made public; all Board meetings are preceded by an open
public meeting that deals with all items on the Board agenda; and the Board
holds a press conference to announce decisions and take questions from all
comers, press and others, immediately following its meetings. Finally, the
"Internet tax" canard: what do you call the fee that NSI charges to accept
a name registration, and even more obviously the fee ($35) it charges to
renew a registration -- an act that has virtually no cost at all to NSI? I
would call it a monopoly tax -- 35 times the fee that ICANN proposes to
charge for providing the vehicle that allowed the introduction of
competition that will almost certainly drive down NSI's monopoly charge far
more than $1. If you want to make a meaningful contribution to this
debate, and not simply repeat NSI's propaganda, you need to do a little
more independent research.
