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Please don't accept the revised agreements

  • To: revised-biz-info-org-agreements@xxxxxxxxx
  • Subject: Please don't accept the revised agreements
  • From: Russ Goodwin <russ@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2006 00:35:27 -0500

Dear Members of the ICANN Board-

The revised agreements for the .BIZ, .INFO, and .ORG registries remain deeply flawed and should be reworked.

It is irresponsible for ICANN to agree to perpetually renewing contracts when ICANN is charged with fostering competition in the domain name system. ICANN must be permitted to solicit competing bids from other potential registry operators and be free to award the contract to whomever it deems most suitable to operate the registry. The proposed agreements provide only for termination in the event the registries breach the agreements and do not resolve the breach after arbitration.

This form of renewal affords the registries perpetual monopoly status over their respective gtlds provided they honor the terms of the proposed agreement, effectively barring ICANN from taking action against a registry that engages in an undesirable behavior which was not considered of at the time the agreement was written.

The existence of other gtld's (no matter how many there are now or may be in the future) does not provide sufficient competition, as each domain name is unique within its respective gtld and newer gtld's are not well recognized or well regarded worldwide. Increasing the number of gtlds only increases the costs to businesses that wish to protect their intellectual property in all tld's, it does not drive down the prices of existing gtld's (the prices of .com, .net, and .org domain names have not fallen since the introduction of the .biz, .info namespaces).

Further, the addition of a provision for annual price increases in the revised agreements is troubling. For ICANN to award the registries the right to increase prices without substantial justification and competitive bid would be an abdication of its responsibility to all its stakeholders.

In recent years we have seen prices for Internet access and telephone service fall in the United States. Additionally, retail prices for domain names have fallen as more registrars have entered the marketplace. Lower prices and greater competition are better for consumers and have not resulted in a less-stable telephone, Internet, or domain name infrastructure. Instead they have lead to unprecedented growth in consumption of telecommunications and related services.

ICANN must work to keep operation of the registries open to competition and as transparent as possible while maintaining or lowering the prices of domain names to foster competition and increase consumption and public acceptance of the gtlds.

Thank you for considering my comments.

Sincerely,

Russ Goodwin
President
The Tidewinds Group, Inc.



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