.com Agreement Submission

["Dave Chiswell" <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

December 7, 2005

 

Vint Cerf, Chair, ICANN Board of Directors Members of the Board of Directors
ICANN

 

Via email

 

As per the request of the ICANN Board of Directors at the recent meetings in
Vancouver, B.C. for continued public comment, this submission respectfully
expresses the views of NameScout Corporation, an ICANN accredited registrar,
to the recently proposed ICANN/VeriSign .com Registry Agreement.

 

While we are aware that the ICANN Board is looking for concrete suggestions
we would like to begin by expressing our strong opposition to the proposed
.com deal with VeriSign and offer the following reasons and recommendations
for what we consider to be an acceptable course of action:

 

1.    The proposed deal was brokered in a manner that is in opposition to
the

ICANN PDP and goals of bottom-up consensus and transparency. By using the
.com agreement as a bargaining chip in a lawsuit settlement, ICANN has
violated their responsibility to their constituencies and damaged their own
credibility within the internet community. We recommend you separate the
VeriSign lawsuit from the .com agreement as bundling the two represents a
clear conflict of interest.

 

2.    It allows VeriSign to increase prices over the next seven years, when

market indicators and market demands suggest future price decreases. We
recommend you open the .com agreement to a competitive bid process.

 

 

3.    As the world's dominant gTLD, this agreement puts the future of .com
in

the hands of a for-profit monopoly whose business practices can have serious
and far-reaching impact on the overall growth of the market. Price increases
will negatively impact registrars and registrants alike.  We recommend
periodic competitive rebids of the .com and other registry operation
contracts.

 

4.    Potential new registry services will stifle innovation and

competitiveness in periphery .com markets and may have repercussions for
registrars and registrants.  We recommend deletion of sections dealing with
new registry services in favour of a narrow definition of monopoly registry
services to be modified only through ICANN's existing consensus-based
policy-making processes.

 

In addition, this agreement may be used as a standard for future registry
agreements for other TLDs, causing a ripple effect for the future
competitiveness of the overall industry. Simply put, it is unacceptable to
allow the business terms of the internet to be defined by a lawsuit
settlement agreement with a monopoly organization.

 

Sincerely,

 

Dave Chiswell

CEO

NameScout Corporation

NameScout Corporation is an accredited ICANN Registrar offering domain
registration, web hosting and email services.