[ga] Once more into the breach....WLS spin by proponents

[George Kirikos <gkirikos@yahoo.com>]

Hello,

In a last ditch attempt to influence the outcome of the ICANN Board's
decision on WLS, we've got the post by Susan Crawford at:

http://forum.icann.org/cgi-bin/rpgmessage.cgi?wls;3D41DE6D00000358

All of Susan's arguments have been made ad nauseum in the past, and had
been responded to. It seems that they simply want to get in "the last
word" (or "the last spin"), as a desperate last move to put lipstick on
the pig named WLS.

Louis Touton, in his analysis of April 17th, at:

http://www.icann.org/minutes/report-vgrs-wls-17apr02.htm

gave us the ground rules, "it is my judgment that the Board should not
seek to decide how to deal with this request without invoking the
formal consensus development processes currently established within
ICANN." The overwhelming consensus is that WLS be denied, as an
unwanted intrusion on an existing competitive marketplace that is
thriving at the registrar level. ICANN's mission is to foster
competition, and that has been its major success, as it has stated on
more than one occasion. The double-speak that WLS will actually
increase competition is simply preposterous. I and many others would
echo Susan's statement that "The Board's obligation is to take steps
that maximally favor competition." Rejection of the monopolistic WLS
definitely accomplishes that goal. Indeed, it is the Board's only
choice, given that acceptance of WLS will cause a challenge by affected
Registrars, as I noted at:

http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/nc-transfer/Arc00/msg00303.html

a challenge which the registrars would win easily, since ICANN can not
show consensus for this new policy affecting domain name allocations.
Indeed, more powerfully, not only can ICANN not show consensus FOR WLS,
there is consensus AGAINST WLS.

The fact of the matter is that there is intrinsic demand for the domain
names themselves, not WLS as a mechanism to acquire them. We currently
have numerous means to acquire those names, and WLS seeks to monopolize
that marketplace not because it is a "better offering", but instead
because it gets first dibs on all the names, leaving everyone else with
the table scraps that no one else wanted. If NameWinner had done such a
deal with Verisign, instead of SnapNames, we'd see the exact opposite
spin by SnapNames, I'm sure, that it's anti-competitive, etc.

I find it amusing that proponents of WLS refused to take my "Cookie
Challenge", posted on the DNSO GA list multiple times, to answer the
questions posed at:

http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/ga/Arc10/msg02855.html

among other places, regarding the "Effects Test" of WLS. However, Susan
has taken up the "Cheese Challenge". Where do I send the cheese, to go
along with her whine? :)

Sincerely,

George Kirikos
http://www.kirikos.com/

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