MCI makes two basic points: that DNS service providers should pay essentially all
of ICANN's costs, and that these providers' customer bases by some unexplained convolution
should be expropriated as "public property."What this ignores is that a substantial
portion of ICANN's work involves the coordination of IP addresses - which MCI acquired
substantially from several hundred million dollars worth of government contracts
- and for which it gets a free ride in ICANN as the largest user of IP addresses.
Increasingly much of ICANN's work will also involve evolving all these arrangement
to the significant benefit of MCI. By any measure, it is MCI that should be
paying the preponderance ICANN's budget.
Lastly, if DNS service providers' customer
databases are to be expropriated as public property, so should MCI's - considering
how much of its Internet business was build off of US government largesse.
Other ISPs should have access to all those MCI customer records as well.