>You only commented on 2 of his points. I'll presume you must agree with the others.
So let's take a look at the 2 that you don't agree with.<I thought we discussed
assumptions below. Just because I didn't feel the need to respond to points that
I felt were irrelevant doesn't mean that I agree with them.
>2. You doubt the reliability
of Image Online designs application. Wouldn't it be very easy to test this? As IOD
clearly has a first right on .web, ICANN should discuss a one-weeks-test-bed with
IOD, where Afilias, Neustar and ICANN itself may "bombard" IOD with free-registrations
to a test-databank. Should IOD not break down completely, as you, the evaluation
team suppose, then they should receive .web. If they DO break down, well, then they
loose it. To avoid legal consequences, their databank with the 20'000 existing registrations
could still be transferred to the winner (Afilias or NeuStar).<
If ICANN wants
to add a test like this to their evaluation criteria, I'm all for it. If it's going
to be done though, every applicant should be able to participate in similar testing.
IOD doesn't deserve any advantage or preference, regardless of what IOD pre-registrants
seem to believe.
>3. We informed ICANN of serious problems within NSI, who are
currently charging registration fees twice, if domain names are being transferred
to another registrar. Did you look into that?<
I'm not aware of this, however it
wouldn't surprise me. NSI, for lack of a better word, is crap. That's why I don't
register domains through them. However I don't see what relevance this has to the
Afilias application, since NSI owns only 5.25% of Afilias. Certainly the other Afilias
members acting as registrars wouldn't let this happen because it would possibly hurt
them financially. Which is another nice thing about Afilias - you've got companies
that don't necessarily like each other working and compromising to build a competitive
system.
>This is false, as I've said almost 50 times now. We have committed to
having our RRP up and functional within 30 to 60 days. Afilias, on the other hand,
has not. They will only have their membership to register with. Since they're the
owners, that's no competition at all. They've given no timeframe for admitting registrars.
We have.<
I'd rather be guaranteed that a minimum of 19 companies are competing
on Day 1 than to be told that there *might* be competition on Day 1.
>Absolutely.
So we were criticized for having a hard time hiring in California (which is untrue),
yet Afilias has members all over the
world and hasn't even chosen a location for
their company yet, and they get praised? Hardly seems fair. As for diversity, the
members of Afilias, as owners, cannot be called "diverse" in the mode of competition,
as they are owners. Competition, in this case, must question who owns the registry,
and their registrar policy. Afilias's owners comprise 98% of the existing market,
and they have no timetable for admitting non-member registrars. This isn't diversity,
it's market-lock.<
You see it that way. I see it the same way ICANN sees it. It
might be hard to believe Chris, but there are people who *do* see things differently
than you.
>Afilias is a single company. IOD is a single company. Regardless of
who owns it. If you take this logic, then Microsoft has hundreds of thousands of
owners (they're called shareholders), yet they're a monopoly.<
On paper, yes, they
are single companies, but Microsoft shareholders are individuals and companies that
don't compete. The owners of Afilias are companies that *do* compete. Also, the organizational
structure of an LLC is different from that of a corporation in that the revenues
and profits are passed through the LLC to the member companies.
>7. We wonder why
the application of NeuStar has not been refused. The release shows that NeuStar submitted
.web on their own, yet their application still lists "JVTeam" as the technical and
financial basis.
NeuStar's .web application doesn't reflect the current situation
anymore. We can't see, why it wasn't refused. The fact that this application has
"generously" NOT been refused raises questions as to the objectivity of the evaluation
team.<
I am unimpressed with the NeuStar application and don't consider them a
serious contender considering that the Afilias application is much stronger than
theirs. Hell, I like the IOD application more than I like the NeuStar application.