Looking on the bright side, the meeting from 13 - 16 (Starting tomorrow) will
result in everyone being happy that a fair and open process of selection has taken
place.The result would be announced on 20th and the schedule is for the new TLDs
to be implemented into the internet at the beginning of 2001.
If one or more parties
do not feel that they have been fairly treated - for example Afilias could arguably
be turned down because of the potential for an industry monopoly - then that party
could take legal action in the form of an injunction to halt the process.
Afilias
would most likely have a good case here because one of their rivals (JVTeam) employed
a member of the ICANN board to their own senior management team and that person [apparantly]
forgot to mention it until it was highlighted in the public comment forum.
It
then turned out that he was one of three extra board members that had forgotten that
they had interests in one or more of the applicants.
In any case,
with an injunction in place the process would not progress obviously.
An independent
review could be requested and might take literally years to delve into the financial
activities of the ICANN board members. It would be a surprise if all of the skeletons
are already out of the closet.
The alteration of bylaws to bypass the publicly
elected members in the TLD vote is just one issue that would have to be explored.
Then there is the issue of non elected members extending their own contracts, plus
the ICANN, DNSO, CORE (plus WHO and Melbourne IT), iDOmanin, Afilias, JVTeam eight
way conflict of interest that Ken Stubbs has got himself into - that could take a
time to investigate.
The only ICANN comment I've seen was on this board and it
dissmissed the whole thing out of hand. Even that would need to be investigated.
Afilias's
proposal did not raise any weaknesses at all. Even though similarities were highlighted
in other applications as weaknesses (Afilias, for example do not have any staff while
one of their members - Register.com is unable to find replacements for Alan Breitman,
the VP of finance or Sascha Mornell, senior VP of sales and marketing both of whom
recently resigned).
Afilias would have a good case to argue that ICANN had not
looked into their proposal properly or given it due attention.
With Afilias's resources
and support they could string the whole thing out for several years for sure, at
the same time the only product available in the meantime is theirs, the million or
so desirable domains that NSI has been holding back would appreciate in value considerably
and so really they would have nothing at all to lose.
I think we can be sure that
Afilias will be getting one of the TLDs just because of the unprofessional way that
ICANN has handled its afairs.
Of course the same is true for any agrieved applicant.
The whole .kids appliation and the name space application have been dismissed
already.
Its important to note that at the same time, all applications associated
with Ken Stubbs - even the ridiculous .per and .nom applications (Anthony5556234452.per
?? very handy!) have been accepted into the next round.
The .kids people could
argue that ICANN did not represent the internet community citing the MSNBC survey
(where .kids was voted the sixth most popular choice on the planet) and ICANNs decision
to exclude popularly elected members from the decision as evidence.
Furthermore,
ICANN seems to have already decided that the concept of .kids is wrong in the present
technological climate - yet they accepted $200,000 in payment before they said so.
This point is arguable. .kids as a restricted TLD is surely as applicable as .biz
(Stubbs application), .per (Stubbs application) and .nom (Stubbs application).
Whether
or not you agree is not the point. The issue is that there is scope for discussion
and therefore potential for delay.
We'll just have to see what happens!