Reply to Chuck Gomes's statement of support for proposed agreements

[Andrew Moulden <andrew@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

To the ICANN BoD:

I wish to reply to Chuck Gomes's statements of support for each of the 
proposed agreements, as posted here:
http://forum.icann.org/lists/biz-tld-agreement/msg00106.html
http://forum.icann.org/lists/info-tld-agreement/msg00107.html
http://forum.icann.org/lists/org-tld-agreement/msg00124.html

As the wording of each of his three statements is identical, excepting 
the actual TLD - biz, info, org respectively - I will refer to his 
"statement" in the singular.
Of the many dozens of submissions posted over the past few days, since 
at least elements of the internet community awoke to the very real 
dangers that would be posed by the lifting of registry price caps, Mr 
Gomes's statement is the only one to voice unconditional support for the 
proposed agreements. Opposition has been widespread: Network Solutions 
(Jonathon Nevitt), GoDaddy (Tim Ruiz), CORE (Marcus Faure) and other 
registrars have expressed their deep concerns. Well-known figures such 
as Danny Younger, Jeff Williams and Karl Auerbach are strongly opposed. 
Many commercial and personal website operators, particularly those 
employing multiple and/or "prestigious" web domains, are clearly 
horrified at the prospect of price caps being lifted. But among them 
all, a lone voice - that of Verisign's Chuck Gomes - has expressed support.
In his submission, Mr Gomes plays the "security and stability" card. He 
says that these agreements will provide registries with the "incentives 
and flexibility to continue to invest in Internet infrastructure" - in 
other words, he is claiming that price rises would be for our own good, 
as if the registries are financially stretched to fulfil the technical 
requirements specified in their existing agreements - which is nonsense. 
This is nothing to do with Verisign's profitability or otherwise; of 
course not!
Mr Gomes also claims to be motivated by seeing that there is a "level 
playing field for all the registries" and states that each of these 
agreements "closely mirrors the model registry agreements that ICANN has 
already used or proposed" for other gTLDs. His phrase "closely mirrors" 
is at best a fudge, but even if his claim could be shown to be in some 
sense valid, it is tantamount to saying "you messed it up before, so you 
should mess it up again to ensure consistency".
These are the only two arguments that Mr Gomes advances. Considering 
possible vested interests (2012 being closer than ever!) I would urge 
the Board to contrast the quite remarkable weakness of Mr Gomes's 
arguments with the breadth and depth of opposition from so many other 
sections of the internet community.
Sincerely,
Andrew Moulden

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