More garbage press releases released as "Independent Economic Reports"

[George Kirikos <gkirikos@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi folks,

ICANN posted two more garbage press releases masquerading as independent 
economic reports about new gTLDs, see:

http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-06jun09-en.htm

Of course, to no one's surprise, the reports simply justified their original 
papers. They ignored and dismissed the significant concerns raised by the 
community, once again. ICANN never even posted a summary or analysis of the 
original comments that were submitted:

http://forum.icann.org/lists/competition-pricing-prelim/

The author completely ignored the issue of tiered pricing, and did not 
investigate the magnitude of switching costs (e.g. for a company to switch from 
Cars.com or Hotels.com to NewCo.cars or NewBiz.hotels if the registry operator 
for .com was allowed to charge different prices for each domain name, which 
would be the monopolist's optimal strategy if price caps were eliminated). 
Indeed, Dr. Carlton's entire report is based on the false assumption that all 
consumers would be charged identical prices. Paragraph 69 states:

"Ex ante competition serves to protect both uninformed consumers, which face 
greater risk of opportunistic price increases, as well as better informed 
consumers BECAUSE BOTH SETS OF CONSUMERS PAY THE SAME PRICES." (emphasis added)

This of course would not be the case. VeriSign would charge more for Cars.com 
and Hotels.com than it would for JoesUsedCars.com and 
SmallBoutiqueHotelInMiami.com.

In our original comments, we challenged the author, and ICANN itself, to 
disclose their own switching costs, by accepting/rejecting direct offers to 
purchase their domain names:

http://forum.icann.org/lists/competition-pricing-prelim/msg00000.html

They ignored this, and simply wave their hands and pretend that switching costs 
are insignificant or are exaggerated. It appears ICANN is prepared to say 
anything in order to justify new gTLDs.

This report is worthless, and ICANN needs to do the full and independent 
economic analysis to justify the introduction of new gTLDs.

Sincerely,

George Kirikos
http://www.leap.com/