Well said Mike, thanks Michael Castello CEO/President Castello Cities Internet Network, Inc. http://www.ccin.com michael@ccin.com -- Wednesday, December 7, 2011, 2:37:47 PM, you wrote: MR> Reading over today's testimony, one can't help but have the MR> feeling that ICANN is digging itself deeper and deeper into a MR> bunker position from which it may not recover. MR> I'm reminded of the gigantic underground cistern located near the MR> Blue Mosque in Istanbul. Worth a trip if you haven't seen it. MR> After the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Goths and so on came MR> down the peninsula and ravaged the city. So walls were built. MR> Then sieges were put in place and folks ran out of water. So at MR> great expense the cistern was dug and covered over. Then longer MR> sieges, etc. The invaders prevailed. MR> The moral being that some ideas are so flawed that no amount of MR> building walls thicker and cisterns deeper will carry the day. MR> The Kurt Pritz testimony goes on for more than 15 pages trying to MR> cover every possible contingency of bad behavior connected to new TLDs. And doesn't succeed. MR> Even though the BC membership includes members with multiple MR> relationships to ICANN, some of which are linked to proposed new MR> TLDs, the core rationale for our constituency is to represent MR> business users of the Domain Name System. Setting aside IDNs, MR> which have their own rationale, I haven't seen any enthusiasm for MR> new TLDs among users, and most of us have been opposed but willing MR> to work on the details with ICANN because that seemed better than MR> letting it happen without any input from us. What we have gotten MR> for our trouble is Kurt claiming in his testimony that there is MR> broad community support for new TLDs. That has never been the case. MR> The ever greater accretion of protective bureaucracy to the MR> program has produced a balance of costs and benefits - in the MR> broad sense, including more than dollars and cents - that is MR> seriously out of whack. It's time for us to acknowledge this, and say so publicly. MR> - Mike