Today's Halloween show, introduced by Igor the ICANN Troll, focuses on the scariest thing I've seen in a long time: the new Verisign giveaway (blogged here). (iPro Radio 55 / 10 Minutes) Header Music: "This is Halloween" by Danny Elfman.

The more I read the proposed new .COM Registry Agreement, the less I like it...or even understand why ICANN believes this might be a good thing for the Internet community (as opposed to a good thing for ICANN, the corporation). In a public conference call with registrars last week, ICANN's Vice-President of Business Operations, Kurt Pritz, claimed that he hadn't heard anything from domain name registrants about the proposed .COM agreement. Here are a handful of things that registrants should consider discussing with Mr. Pritz:

1. The Price for .COM names will rise. Virtually every mass market Internet service I can think of (like broadband access, VOIP, and hosting, to name just a few) has seen consumer prices decline over time. ICANN is allowing Verisign to move the registration of .COM names in the opposite direction, permitting the registry to raise the $6 base price of .COM registrations by 7% annually.

2. Verisign will operate .COM in perpetuity...without having to earn the right to do so. I'm sure that at some time in my lifetime, a new addressing scheme will come along to replace domain names. Until that happens, however, Verisign will be selling .COM services, in a virtual monopoly, without ever having to engage in a competive bidding process for the right to do so. With no competition, or even the threat of competition, Verisign can raise prices, year after year, regardless of its costs, regardless of past performance, and without raising its service levels.

3. The new agreement gives Verisign a perpetual commercial interest in the .COM zone metadata, at no cost. Specifically, the agreement gives Verisign the right to leverage the .COM zone TLD servers it operates to "mak[e] commercial use of, or collect, traffic data regarding domain names or non-existent domain names" for any purpose. I can imagine dozens of uses for this data, from increasing the accuracy of search engines, which could weight some sites higher than others based on the number of queries to the TLD servers for a given domain name, to more accurately gauging the resale value of a deleting domain name. If the data is Verisign's to sell, as opposed to public data available to anyone, you can imagine the bidding war that could start among Google, Yahoo! and other search engines. And yet, with this completely new source of revenue, Verisign can still raise it's price. If anything, Verisign ought to be paying us for this data. What do you want to bet that Google would volunteer to run the .COM registry, for free, in exchange for the .COM zone metadata?

4. No checks on ICANN's growth.  Perhaps most importantly, the new .COM agreement will allow ICANN to fund itself easily and predictably, forever, by taking a 50 cent bite out of every .COM registration. ICANN also gets a $1,250,000 payment up front for the cost of "implementing" the new .COM agreement. In the past, ICANN has had to get approval from registrars for its annual budget. The new agreements allow ICANN to bypass the registrars, get funding directly from the .COM registry (which can and will pass the cost back to the registrars), and completely skip the approval process. In past years, the budget approval process has been an important check on ICANN's growth. I can understand why ICANN likes this, but a large, powerful ICANN is not necessarily in the best interests of the Internet community.

5. Verisign is rewarded for a dubious record of past performance. Having been rebuked first by the Internet community and then ICANN for initiating several new registry services, like Sitefinder, with no advance notice, Verisign filed a lawsuit against ICANN last year making allegations of antitrust, unlawful interference with its business, and other claims. ICANN successfully kicked out the antitrust claims and  then countersued, claiming, correctly, that Verisign was in material breach of the .COM and .NET registry agreements. But now, incredibly, the settlement of that lawsuit puts Verisign in a materially better position than it was previously and, more incredibly, allows Verisign to continue to litigate similar issues in a separate lawsuit filed by Snapnames.

The theme running through all of these is that ICANN and Verisign are treating the .COM registry as a private resource. It's not. The root servers and TLD servers are public resources. We should treat them like that.

I'm sure there are more reasons to be concerned. We're putting together a list of concerns in the At Large Advisory Committee to forward to ICANN. More comments are welcome in the comment space below (and send them to the ICANN public comment board,  settlement-comments@icann.org, as well).

What's on my iPod? Chances are I'm listening to something that's linked in the "Podrolling" section in the margin. Each entry has three links, in this order: the podcaster's website, the RSS 2.0 feed, and a link to the podcast's subscription page in iTunes.

That purple icon is the iTunes link. Click that icon and, if it's installed, iTunes will open and connect to the linked show's subscription and information page in the iTunes Music Store. (If you don't have iTunes, available here, you'll get an error message.) All of the subscriptions linked in my podroll are free.

P.S. My everyday computer is now running Redhat Enterprise WS (a subject for a future podcast), so I'm painfully aware that iTunes is not available to everyone. I'm experimenting with various Linux podcasting clients though (like BashPodder and iPodder Lemon), so solutions do exist.

So I'm trudging through the ICANN-Verisign documents, and one thing has jumped out at me: the Settlement Agreement is not conditioned on ICANN's approval and execution of the new .COM Registry Agreement. The only place that the 2005 .com Registry Agreement is mentioned is in the third recital and the notice provision (Paragraph 11). If this is a stand-alone agreement, by all means, sign it now and put an end to the litigation. And then don't sign the proposed new .COM Registry Agreement. It's horrible.

If there's a side understanding that we haven't heard about -- expressly conditioning the settlement upon ICANN advocating for or executing the new .COM Agreement -- we need more disclosure. I suppose I'm also a little suspicious since the settlement does not contain a merger clause and alludes to other, undefined obligations in Paragraph 9 where it obligates the parties to "execute and deliver any additional papers, documents and other assurances that are necessary to carry out the intent of this Agreement." As written, the Settlement Agreement practically screams out that there's a side deal somewhere. Have I missed something, am I just paranoid, or....?

Paul Twomey: "[Registrars] are generally happy with the [ICANN-Verisign] agreement overall." via byte.org.

Paul, listen to this mp3.

How ironic that these are the same folks who, in their support for U.N. control of the root zone, claim to fear that the U.S. will unilaterally delete .IR. Under United States-ICANN management, no TLD been "wiped off the map." Meanwhile, the Iranian President aspires to genocide while complaining about root zone management.

New York Times: TEHRAN, Oct. 28 - The president of Iran stood by his earlier call to "wipe Israel off the map" on Friday, while other Iranian officials played it down and some commentators here suggested it was a sign of what they considered his amateurism. The president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was cheered by thousands of supporters during an anti-Israel rally in Tehran on Friday. "My words are the Iranian nation's words," he said of his statement, which was widely condemned around the world, the Iranian news agency IRNA quoted him as saying. "Westerners are free to comment, but their reaction is invalid."

Update: The headline was intended as irony. I wasn't suggesting that ICANN, or anyone else, seriously delete a ccTLD.

Ross Rader: "What does the Snapnames lawsuit have to do with the Verisign lawsuit?"

Excellent question.

In today's show: music by Kevin Johnson, my one year anniversary (almost) of podcasting, and the effect of the proposed new COM registry contract on ICANN's budget. (iPro Radio 54 / 10 Minutes) Header Music: "The Bad Old Days" by Kevin Johnson.

John Berryhill doesn't have a weblog, but his posts to various mailing lists are consistently worth reading. Here's his post today to the ICANN registrars.

I recorded the registrars' meeting with ICANN today for later listening, so if you're interested, here is the link: registrar-meeting1- 27Oct2005.mp3 (50 megs). I haven't listened yet so I have no idea how informative the meeting was. I'll probably post some thoughts tomorrow after I've had a chance to listen.

Yes, of course it is. That, and more, on today's podcast. With background links to the ICANN Board resolution, Verisign litigation documents, the current .COM registry agreement, and this post from Byte.org. (iPro Radio 53 / 10 Minutes) Header Music: "Rocks for Dinner" by Kevin Johnson.

Jay Westerdal from Name Intelligence, Inc. has run the numbers, and based on the current growth rate of the .COM zone file and the expected escalation of .COM registry-level prices in the proposed new contracts, Verisign will be pulling in over a billion annually (that's $1,150,641,387.77, to be precise) by the year 2012.

The next, harder question is what is the delta between the revenue to be generated under the proposed new contracts and the revenue generated if .COM were put out for a competive bid?

As George Kirikos points out here, Tucows has offered to run .COM for $2.00 a name. At that price, Verisign's annual monopoly profit in 2012 would be $903,745,689.52.

Okay, you're skeptical; after all, Tucows' proposal was presented at an open microphone and not in a binding bid. So instead take the Afilias ($3.25) bid for .NET. (Proposed pricing on the Sentan, DENIC, and CORE++ bids was confidential...or I just couldn't find it.). Assume that by 2012, inflation would have required Afilias to raise the price by $1.00. (You also could assume that, as with most technology services, the price would actually decline over time as the costs of providing the services were driven down by the declining costs of infrastructure and bandwidth.) At $4.25, Verisign's monopoly rent for 2012 would be $626,094,278.99.

Any answer to the question I posed above though is, of course, pure speculation. We won't be able to measure the delta between Verisign's revenue and a competitor's revenue unless we put the registry out to bid. And, I suppose, that's precisely the point of my central complaint about the new agreements.

"So I got my reading glasses, and I got my reading drink, and I've read it now, I'll tell you what I think...." Words from today's header music to guide the podcast. A second-look at the ICANN-Verisign contracts. A little thinking out loud about ICANN's role in settlement discussions, and the effect of .COM's monopolistic pricing model. (iPro Radio 53 / 10 Minutes) Header Music: "Good for Nothing" by Kevin Johnson.

In today's show, I provide an initial summary of the ICANN-Verisign settlement agreement and make a few preliminary thoughts. I also catch up on some housekeeping and alert ICANN-followers to the category-specific RSS feeds of this weblog. (iPro Radio 51 / 11 Minutes) Header Music: "Blue Line Blues" by Kevin Johnson.

Exhibit A to the proposed ICANN-Verisign Settlement Agreement contains a reference to a "February, 2005 agreement between ICANN and Verisign." I can't find this agreement on any of the pages linked here. This would have been an interesting time for ICANN and Verisign, coming in the middle of the .NET process. Have I just missed the link to this agreement on the ICANN site? Links appreciated. Help me blog readers....

I haven't made my way through all of the Verisign-ICANN Agreements yet, but my first stop was the "Root Server Management Transition Agreement." This is good stuff. Read this excerpt:

Verisign and ICANN agree to....


Giving ICANN the authority to edit and publish the root zone does two things, as I see it. First, it removes that publication authority from Verisign, which, as a contractor with the USG, has perhaps enjoyed some legal and other protections not available to other registries and ICANN participants. Second, and more importantly, it's an important step foward in ICANN's process toward independence from the U.S.

Julian Sanchez, writing in Reason Online, has some reasonable thoughts about oversight and management of the Internet's root zone.

This just hit the wire services: "The Internet's key oversight agency said Monday it had tentatively agreed to settle a longstanding dispute with VeriSign Inc., a private company that runs much of the Internet's core."

Viviane Reding, European Commissioner responsible for Information Society and Media, in a speech on WSIS: "The recent controversy around a possible new .xxx Top Level Domain for adult content highlighted this bizarre situation. Several public administrations have expressed concern over this initiative, including the European Commission, but it will be the sole right of the US government to decide whether this Top Level Domain enters cyberspace or not, even though it will be visible on the screens of net users in countries all around the world."

This is not only wrong, it's irresponsible. Ms. Reding completely ignores ICANN's role in the selection of new gTLDs: a process that has nothing to do with the United States government. Either the author of this paper has no clue about how new gTLDs are selected or she's intentionally misstating the facts for political effect (can you say 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'?). If it's the latter, be very afraid. This is less about getting the U.S. out of the way than it is about putting the EU (and other governments) in the way of private-sector led processes.

Viviane Reding's lies certainly will be believed by emerging countries with less previous experience within the GAC and ICANN. It's one thing to have an honest debate about the future of the Internet's core set of resources; it's quite something else to manipulate opinion by playing on the worst fears of emerging governments and those who know nothing about ICANN's processes.

Here's the truth of the matter. The U.S. has charged ICANN, a multi-stakeholder, international body with an international Board of Directors, with the responsibility of selecting new gTLDs. Since ICANN was created in 1998, ICANN has selected nine new gTLDs (.BIZ, .INFO, .PRO, .NAME, .MUSEUM, .AERO, .COOP, .JOBS, and .TRAVEL) and all nine have been entered into the root zone. The idea that it is the United States government that will decide whether .XXX is appropriate for the root zone or not is completely out of touch with reality...and history.

One final point. If, like Ms. Reding, you put the .XXX decision-making on the U.S. government rather than ICANN, you're implying that the the new body you'd like to put in place of the United States would have power over the selection of new gTLDs. In other words, you're advocating the replacement of benign, laissez faire oversight (US) with a top-down control model (EU+other nationa). This is bad.

Personally, I favor replacing them both and making ICANN the final arbiter. But that model is much closer to the status quo than it is to the plan mapped out by Commissioner Reding.

Harris Miller, President of the Information Technology Association of America: "In attempting to act as an advocate for developing nations, the EU has instead done little more than compromise its own common sense."

Marc Canter has penned an absolutely terrific article: Breaking the Web Wide Open!  Must reading.

Karl Auerbach: "Suddenly internet governance has become a hot topic. Words and phrases fly back and forth but minds rarely meet. We do not have discussion, we have chaos. We are not moving forwards towards a resolution. Its time to step back and review some basic principles...."

Good stuff.

United Press International: "U.S. officials find it inexplicable that the Brussels-based club has ganged up with the likes of Russia, China and Iran ahead of a U.N. summit on the information society in Tunisia next month. They argue that ICANN has never abused its authority and always adopted a light-touch approach to regulating the Internet."

Today's show, podcast number 50,  is a bit of a reflective ramble. Sparked by Charlie Nesson's podcasts, I think out loud about ICANN's future and why many of us were so excited about ICANN at its creation. I also speculate that WSIS arose as response to politicians' fear of the Internet as a disruptive technology for governance. (iPro Radio 50 / 10 Minutes) Header Music: "Shadow in the Way," by Tift Merritt.

Declan McCullagh and Anne Broachem writing in CNET's News.com: "In a sign that traditionally obscure discussions about Internet control have taken on new prominence, President Bush broached the topic in a meeting this week with European Commission President José Barroso."

Ross Rader: "Why don't I find this reassuring?"