RE: Deeply, deeply flawed report and analysis George Kirikos

["Charles Christopher" <charles@xxxxxxxxx>]

I'd like to extend some of George's comments.

Verisign's attempt at Sitefinder is another great example of the ignorance of 
this report, as well as the subcontracted wilding carding of the .CM registry.

George lists a number of domains and their "secondary market" sales prices. But 
this masks *WHY* those prices are what they are.

Simply put, if Versign could raise it's renewal fees to $10 million per year it 
would ... And the the entire worlds traffic, and it's monitization, would be 
purely Versign's. The result would not be lawsuits, it would be the end of 
ICANN as coperations got together and split the root, as I-DNS is doing now 
with IDN TLDs, and as NEW.NET did (I was on AT&T at the time who had entered 
the NEW.NET into the AT&T DNS so no plugins were required).

For those who read this and think I'm nuts, let me also remaind you of 
Microsoft, and the largest ISPs of today, and how they are doing all they can 
to rid the registries of as many registrations as they can ... So that 
Microsoft's Internet Explorer can capture the query, and send it to Microsoft's 
backend for monitizing, and ISP's do the same thing on what they consider 
"their private network".

Why is it that Microsoft, and ISP, so shamelessly *MONITIZE* the very domains 
that they used the legal system to eliminate from the registry? And used 
minitization as the basis of the legal case ... Why is this conflict of 
interest allways missing for these "official reports"? Perhaps it has to do 
with the authors having no first hand knowledge of the industry of which they 
are about to change? .... The conflict of interest that they somehow see as 
"competion".

So I still sound nuts? Well what would larger firms think if Versign "just" 
raised renewals to say $1000 per year, or perhaps $10,000 per year? To the 
largest firms these feess would mean *NOTHING*. However to the small companys, 
for which the intenet allows individuals to *UNIQUELY* compete with the largest 
firms, they'd be out of business. The large firms would likely pat Verisign on 
the back for ridding them of the competition and would have no issue with 
Versign monitizing those small companies *YEARS OF WORK DEVELOPING THE .COM 
TLD" ... And thus the .COM brand benefits they thus gain.

Upon startup registries need registrant to build their brand. However once the 
traffic is there via "hard coded links" througout the internet, the work of 
those registrats can easily be stolen and montized by the registry.

This is no different than a farmer with no land rights being killed off after 
he has put in his own hard word to create a productive farm. The idea that this 
farmer "has competitive options" is offensive in the report, the idea that the 
current root administration continually ignores that "farmer's" contribution 
*IS* the problem - And the registries are ready to laugh to the bank if this 
current analysis is the basis for the internet's future.

To be clear, unlike many of my peers, I have no problem with expansion of the 
ROOT. I see large companies having their brand at the ROOT as the perfect 
solution to their trademark issues as consumers "unlearn" looking for brands 
under Versign's .COM brand. Of course removing these brand from being "under" 
.COM means those brand owners *WILL* go after Microsoft for using IE to 
monitize "their" brand's typo's and otherwise unzoned domains, as well as the 
ISP who do the same with wildcarding. As I started to suggest above, if ICANN 
does not expand the TLDs, private industry will and leave ICANN totally 
meaningless - Now *THAT* is competition .... Today's ROOT is nothing more that 
13 values that ISP's reflexively use in their DNS servers, and those values 
take seconds to change ... And cooperation of organizations is how the internet 
got started and how the ROOT worked before ICANN existed ....

But make no mistake, if tiered pricing is allowed, and no pricing limits are in 
place, the registries *WILL* use this to eventually become preditory over THERE 
SOLE OWNERSHIP OF ALL DOMAINS UNDER THEIR TLD AND IT'S TRAFFIC. We have 
allready seen Neulevel take this step in demanding the ability to tier their 
prices if the new TLDs are allowed to do so. In my opinion, all the facts are 
their for those who are looking .... And actually having a portfolio of domains 
helps one understanding as well, and recognize that the internet is still 
growing right now while other indistries are failing ... Because the internet 
is now rewriting the economics books .....


Charles Christopher