On 07/28/2010 03:36 PM, John R. Levine wrote:
Neither I nor .ewe will pay ransom for the privilege of engaging in a lawful business.
That's fine. Heck, you can run .ewe right now. Just set up a few DNS servers and start adding records.
I assume, of course, that you don't expect any of the incumbent DNS roots to include your domain. Why should they? They spend quite a lot of money to run their servers, so they get to decide what they serve.
Yes, I can set up new servers. And in fact I have been using IOD's .web and my .ewe TLD for a decade now via servers that extend the ICANN/NTIA/Verisign root zone. The point, however, as you clearly recognize - and I believe that we all recognize - is that as a practical matter there is presently only one real marketplace for domain names. (There may also be sub markets - as in .com as is being fought in the CFIT case.) ICANN can't pretend that its management of everything from prices to products to vendors is excused because it is engaging in "technical coordination". The rules that ICANN imposes have do not promote any technical goals, much less are they grounded in any technical necessity. ICANN stand astride the one practical DNS marketplace in much the same way John D. Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Company stood astride oil refining in 1880. That practical dominance, under certain conditions, can give rise to restraint of trade issues, whether under the laws of the United States, the European Union, Japan, Australia, or elsewhere. Moreover, ICANN, via things like its bull against competition against ICANN - ICANN's ICP 3 - declares war not merely on any enterprise that tries to operate outside the ICANN system but upon competition itself. Take a look at "ICANN and Antitrust" by Froomkin and Lemley - http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBIQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%... --karl--