I certainly have plenty of criticisms of ICANN and Afilias, but the sky isn't always
falling when people on this message board say so, and things aren't always as terrible
as people make them out to be by extrapolating the terms of the agreements.In
this case, though the agreement does indeed permit Afilias to reserve up to 10,000
names for themselves (divided between names that belong to the registry function
and names belonging to Afilias itself), it also requires these names to be itemized
in Appendix X of the agreement, and requires written notice for any changes to this
appendix. At present, the version in effect of this appendix (see link below)
lists only 150 names in all, a far cry from 10,000.
Any additions to this list
will have to go through ICANN approval and will be posted publicly just like the
present appendix is, and will most likely take place after the sunrise and landrush
periods are complete (and hence won't be able to grab any more names ahead of the
public).
Thus, this isn't really the big problem it's made out to be; we should
focus on the many true problems with the new TLD startup procedures, rather than
making up new ones that don't exist. (However, it would be a good idea to keep
an eye on Appendix X of each of the TLD agreements to spot any additions the registries
might try to make in the future.)