It was apparant from the lack of comment regarding Ken Stubbs, the alteration of
the by laws to exclude the new board members from this vote (when they were not excluded
from the last vote) and the failure of three board memebers to disclose their conflicted
interest until 1 November that ICANN was not always as open and transparant as their
PR dept would have us believe.It was to be expected that they would support Afilias
and not support IOD.
They list five points in favour of IOD and three points against
IOD and two points against .web from the public forum.
ICANN finds fault
with the cash balance of $450,000 but doesn't take into account the $6M funding IOD
has when it's TLD becomes active. Presumably any company with less then half a million
dollars in the bank is open to attack on this front (I notice Core detail a negative
balance of over $1M).
They comment that "Despite this new competition, IOD anticipates
maintaining its $15 registry price throughout the forecast period."
But they know
full well that the price set by IOD will be determined by the market. This point
has been raised many times and is mentioned again in this discussion group already.
"The
planned management is working at Toyota
San Luis Obispo as the Chief Executive
Officer and Business Manager."
This details just how personal the IOD attack really
is. I didn't know this - and why should I (I'm actually impressed by it though).
It is not for ICANN to fault what the applicants do in their private life, however
it does seem a good opportunity for all thouse involved to disclose where they get
their money from.
Nevertheless a personal attack of this nature before the TLDs
are alocated might be legally interesting afterwards. Are we really to believe that
ICANN is conducting a fair review here?
"according to the pro-forma financial statements,
IOD will act as the registry and the sole registrar for the entire first year."
As
an observer I feel that if I am aware of something then ICANN should also be aware.
IOD have said that they will be sole registrar for 30 days. NSI still dominates this
position for .com .net .org etc after five (?six) years.
Indeed ICANN list this
statement "…they will be the only company allowed to register .web domains for the
first 30 days of operation." in their own opposition to the application section.
IOD
have publicly stated that they are happy to discuss these points with ICANN.
The
finalale is this statement from ICANN "This dual responsibility could potentially
become problematic for the registry operation."
Which brings me on to the Afilias
comments:
ICANN found no weaknesses at all with the application.
No comment
is made from ICANN about the confilcts surrounding CORE or Ken Stubbs.
They list
two points for (one has six sub sections) and seven points against Afilias from the
public forum. The sunrise period is taken as a point for.
A further 13 comments
are listed in the Substantive comments section all giving negative comments about
the Afilias proposal.
ICANN is impressed with Afilias's money (as they are with
JVTEam although they do add a note about Melbourne IT pulling out of the .web application).
ICANN
is unimpressed that a small company could consider itself good enough to do the job.
They disregard the financial backing entirely and openly scoff at the forecast for
.web popularity.
Personally I feel that there is more than enough data to suggest
that this process is not "open and fair" to bring about an injunction to delay the
vote on 16th while there is a review.
By then of course the new members of ICANN
will be eligable to vote and although I do not know any of them I for one will have
more faith in their decision than what I have seen so far.
By the way - have you
seen IOD's site (www.webtld.com) lately? I saw it yesterday and its looking good.
Anthony