I want to urge ICANN to remember that they are managing a public trust, for the common good - not a profit-seeking enterprise. As such, transparency in the decision-making process (including motivations, funding, and budgets) and responsiveness to the community (see e.g. the price controls debacle, where the vast majority of the community supported price controls, and their voices were dismissed because an online tool was used to submit them) are of critical import. Verisign has a checkered history when it comes to operating ethically in the TLD space, and ICANN has a responsibility first and foremost to the community, *not* to commercial DNS operators. It makes little sense to remove one of the few checks against Verisign’s behavior by allowing them to operate a TLD *and* become a domain registrar in that same space (either directly or via an intermediary). Please deliberate and act on behalf of the Internet community as a whole; non-profits and individuals have no more primary representative in this process than ICANN. Sincerely, Scott Francis