1. "By all indications, VeriSign
has honored its obligations under Section 21; ICANN has received no substantial complaints
about discriminatory access to the registries operated by VeriSign"Excuse me?
When did VeriSign release all of the expired domains that they have been sitting
on? What does ICANN see as a 'substantial complaint'; throwing a bomb through the
front door? There have been serious and calculated actions on the part of VeriSign
that prove 'bad faith' on their part as far as operation of the registry is concerned.
2. "For all these reasons, when ICANN and Verisign began to discuss VeriSign's
plans to divest itself of its registrar business so as to... value of the separation
of ownership of VeriSign's registry and registrar businesses to ICANN and the community
had diminished quite significantly over the 15 months since the original registry
agreement was signed."
The separation has never been in VeriSign's best interest
as a corporate entity, is apparently in ICANN's best interest if they receive some
form of monetary stipend to continue operating, and is the worst-case-scenario coming
true for the internet community at large.
3. "As a general matter, it would go
a very long ways toward eliminating the vestiges of special treatment of VeriSign
based on its legacy activities before the formation of ICANN, and in large part place
VeriSign in the same relationship with ICANN as all other generic TLD registry operators
and registrars."
This change would in fact re-inforce such treatment, as the .com
domain is currently 'the goose that lays the golden eggs', especially in light of
the fact that ICANN is attempting to control the creation of 'new' TLDs, which may
engender competition with .com.
To put it mildly, these changes are tantamount
to stamping 'VeriSign owned and approved' on the net.