A registrar opinion of the .COM renewal.

[Mark Jeftovic <markjr@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

We are an ICANN accredited registrar who is also a managed DNS provider.
Thus Verisign to us functions as both a supplier and a competitor.

We have no quarrel with Verisign as a company. What we have an issue
with is ICANN's role in their oversight of this key aspect of the
internet infrastructure.

The fact that there is no competitive bidding process exacerbates issues
about which we have previously gone on record which we feel put global
stakeholders at an extreme disadvantage to US-based ones.

Those issues revolve around governance and issues of law with regard to
all domains registered under a given TLD - in this case, .com.

We have seen in practice that all .com domains are under legal
jurisdiction of the United States owing to the fact that the registry
operator is a US-based company. Thus even non-US domains operating
outside of the United States can be subject to takedowns at the whim of
the US government or agencies without due process or recourse.

This single fact should, if ICANN were properly considering the
interests of the global stakeholders they represent, force an
examination and debate of the unique international legal aspects of
internet governance.

In doing so, the operation of the .com tld would be openly questioned in
terms of what is the best way to structure it in light of these
complicated legal issues. Out of this, alternative scenarios to a
non-competitive renewal would necessarily be examined.

At the very least, a competitive bid on the operation of .COM would
bring out international players, or multi-national players who would
perhaps table alternative governance structures & legal procedures that
were fairer to all global stakeholders.

-mark

-- 
Mark Jeftovic, Founder & CEO, easyDNS Technologies Inc.
Company Website: http://easydns.com
Read My Blog:    http://markable.com
+1-416-535-8672 ext 225