Early press reports this morning that the U.S. Department of Commerce had "approved" the proposed .COM Agreement submitted by ICANN-Verisign appear to be a bit off the mark, perhaps in important ways. Yes, it appears that the DOC has approved a new .COM registry agreement for Verisign, but no, it's not, it seems, the same deal that ICANN submitted to the DOC for approval. Obviously, this requires greater reading and analysis from everyone. Details here, from the NTIA.

ADD: So the "approval" of the ICANN-Verisign agreement, as submitted by ICANN, is technically accurate, but by a new Amendment 30 to the Cooperative Agreement between Verisign and the United States, the DOC apparently has placed limitations on Verisign's ability to exercise certain rights and conditions under its new Agreement with ICANN.

Now the analysis is whether the U.S. restrictions will be meaningful. Still reading....

MORE: On further review, it appears as though the DOC placed only two limits on Verisign. The first limitation is in Section 2 which provides that Verisign cannot enter into any renewal agreement with ICANN when this new agreement expires in 2012 unless and until the Department of Commerce first determines that renewal would "serve the public interest." The "public interest" is rather loosely defined in the Amendment, but it does mention Verisign's compliance with Consensus Policies, contractual and technical terms of the Agreement, investment in infrastructure, and the provision of registry services at "reasonable prices." The second limitation is simply federal antitrust law. In Section 5, the DOC writes that "This approval is not intended to confer federal antitrust immunity on Verisign with respect to the Registry Agreement."

STILL MORE: What's even more interesting about the "public interest" analysis, and I'll certainly write about this more from Sao Paulo, is that whether the "public interest" is served by renewal of Verisign's registry agreement will be determined by the United States Department of Commerce. Certainly a policy issue, we can't even say now, in 2006, what the policy personnel in the United States will look like in 2012. We face Presidential elections in 2008, which means that renewal will be determined at the tail end of a first Presidential term for DOC/NTIA officials appointed by.....John McCain? Hilary Clinton? Barak Obama?

And this only underscores the real problem, -- where we'll see all the fireworks in Brazil -- which is why will the "public interest" be determined solely by the United States?