RE: [alac] VeriSign Statement
-----Original Message----- It would be a useful exercise to list the stakeholders that almost unanimously opposed the Verisign deal. As I asked in a previous email, can we point to the GNSO statement on the issue? The ccNSO? The ASO? The GAC? The SSAC? The RSSAC? -----Original Message----- The Board shouldn't view silence from the SSAC, RSSAC and ASO as a sign of anything at all. Those groups sensibly stay far away from issues outside their narrow mandate, and I would never expect them to opine on the anti-competitive market effects of a deal with a gTLD registry. Similarly, the ccNSO has tried to make a clear separation between ccTLD issues and gTLD issues. I would not expect them to make any statement either. Nevertheless, it's telling that Chris Disspain, the Chair of the ccNSO, sent in this statement in his capacity as CEO of auDA: "auDA as the ccTLD manager for .au. We currently operate a regular competitive bidding process for registry management of .com.au and various other 2LDs in .au. This has resulted in a decrease in prices since 2002 as the volumes of domain names being registered has increased. Given the increases in .com volumes over the duration of the Verisign agreement, and given that the pricing for .net dropped as part of the last competitive bid process run by ICANN, auDA would expect the pricing for .com to be decreasing with additional volumes not increasing." http://forum.icann.org/lists/revised-settlement/msg00177.html As far as the GNSO goes, it approved a resolution in Vancouver asking the Board to defer its decision on a renewed .COM registry agreement until the GNSO had investigated the policy aspects of the proposed new agreement. "The GNSO Council resolves: That the ICANN Board should postpone adoption of the proposed settlement while the Council fully investigates the policy issues raised by the proposed changes." http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/council/msg01612.html The Business Constituency reminded the Board of this resolution in the last public comment period: http://forum.icann.org/lists/revised-settlement/msg00155.html With the exception of the registry constituency, the GNSO constituencies were all against the deal. The Business, ISP, Intellectual Property, non-commercial organizations all opposed various aspects of the deal and voted in favor of the resolution asking for the policy examination period. I am not aware of any stakeholders other than the registries who favored this result. I'd turn the issue around. Rather than asking us for a list of those who opposed the deal, where is the mandate for ICANN to approve it? Aside from Verisign, the registries, and the paid lobbying groups that Verisign asked to weigh in, who else thought this was a good idea? Bret Attachment:
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