Telepathy strongly opposed to revised agreements

[Nat Cohen <ncohen@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Members of the ICANN Board,

As a small Internet-based business owner, I urge the ICANN board to reject
the flawed registry agreements.  I write in support of the thoughtful and
well-reasoned comments submitted previously by the Internet Commerce
Association, GoDaddy and Tidewinds, Inc.

In my view, the fatal flaw in these agreements is the presumptive renewal
provisions.  Unless the gTLD registry renewals are opened to competition
among providers, ICANN is operating in a vacuum as to what are the accurate
market rates for providing registry services.  A gTLD registry is at its
heart a distributed database.  These services need not be expensive.  Since
the biz, org and info extensions are unsponsored gTLDs they do not belong to
any one group or sponsor.  ICANN owes no obligation to the current registry
to renew its control of the registry.  The benefits to the Internet
community of presumptive renewals are far outweighed by the benefits to the
Internet community if registry renewals were decided through fair and open
competition.

ICANN's charter states the fostering competition is a core value.  In the
rare occasions when competition has been permitted, as in the .NET renewal,
costs dropped sharply.  Even if price increases are capped at 10%, if the
actual cost of providing registry is FALLING at 10% per year, then to allow
a monopoly to increase prices in a falling cost environment makes ICANN
complicit in imposing needless costs on the Internet community.

Registry services can easily be opened to competition.  There is no
justification for allowing price increases if it is not backed by a
competitive bidding process.  ICANN has no basis for stating that the price
increases are justified because ICANN is preventing the operation of market
forces that most outside observers expect would result in a DECREASE in the
cost of domain fees.  While a 10% price increase may sound reasonable in the
abstract, in the context of the plummeting costs for providing distributing
database services, these price increases are wholly unreasonable.  In short,
there is no adequate justification for presumptive renewals and every reason
to open renewals to competition.

The Internet community has spoken loudly and clearly in the initial round of
comments of its fierce opposition to presumptive renewals.  In re-proposing
agreements that still include the presumptive renewal provisions without
justifying such provisions, ICANN is callously ignoring its true
constituency in favor of the profit motives of the existing registries.
ICANN approved the new gTLDs in order to benefit the Internet community, not
in order to generate windfall monopoly profits to the registries.

I urge the ICANN board to open the registry renewals to competition.

Sincerely,

Nat Cohen
President
Telepathy, Inc.