Original Cooperative Agreement That Laid The Foundation of Verisign’s Monopoly

To understand Verisign’s anti-competitive monopoly for dot-com domain name registration services, it is important to analyze its agreements with the US government. NTIA has a page on their website documenting aspects of their cooperative agreement with Verisign. However, that page is incomplete, as it only lists Amendments 10 through 35.  The original agreement (between the National Science Foundation and Network Solutions) and the first 9 amendments are not published.

A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request was made to NTIA to obtain those additional historical records. I’m happy to report that NTIA responded to that request and sent all the requested documents. [NB: the US government takes FOIA requests seriously, unlike ICANN’s broken Documentary Information Disclosure Policy, which pretends to be like the FOIA but is far inferior to it]

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ICANN RPM PDP Phase 1 Comment Period is another sham, part 6

More and more people are coming to the realization that the ICANN comment periods are a sham, open to manipulation by ICANN insiders and staff. The comment period for the Phase 1 Initial Report of the Review of All Rights Protection Mechanisms in All gTLDs Policy Development Process ended on May 4, 2020, eleven days ago. I have previously written about it (see my prior blog posts hereherehere, here and here). Rather than diving in and actually doing the work of analyzing the public comments, ICANN staff are actively preventing working group members from having easy access to those submissions.

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URGENT: Last call to submit comments on RPM PDP Initial Report

The comment period for the Phase 1 Initial Report of the Review of All Rights Protection Mechanisms in All gTLDs Policy Development Process ends 23:39 UTC on May 4, 2020, just a day from now (which is not sufficient time to do a thorough analysis). I have previously written about it (see my prior blog posts hereherehere and here).

[Update: I finished my final comments at 1:30 am Toronto time on May 4, so I’ve updated the article below with links to the newer PDF; the changes were relatively minor since the earlier draft, with just some tweaks on the TMCH comments, and stylistic changes, typos, etc.]

To help those who wish to submit public comments, or who wish to refine their own, I’m posting a draft the final version of my extensive comments here. My answers are all in RED text. I’m unable to use the broken online forms, so I’ll need to submit via a DOCX file by tomorrow instead.

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ICANN RPM PDP Phase 1 Comment Period is another sham, part 5

The comment period for the Phase 1 Initial Report of the Review of All Rights Protection Mechanisms in All gTLDs Policy Development Process ends on May 4, 2020, less than 2 days from now (which is not sufficient time to do a thorough analysis). I have previously written about it (see my prior blog posts hereherehere and here). However, it continues to be fraught with problems. Continue reading “ICANN RPM PDP Phase 1 Comment Period is another sham, part 5”