I’ve never really viewed Freedom2Innovate as being a particularly thoughtful blog. Too dogmatic and very little apparent value add. I still troll by once in a while to see what the latest posts have in store. Normally I just move on, but a few things from my most recent visit caught my attention and I can’t help but point out a glaring error that F2I passes on from an equally incorrect CNET op-ed. 

…When they forced a reduction in wholesale prices for the .net domain last year, none of the eight major registrars passed the $10 million in savings on to their customers. It went to their bottom line.

 - CNET via Free2Innovate.net.

The *fact* is that the average selling price for .net domain names is much lower than it was last year prior to the price decrease. Users are getting .net domain names cheaper now than they were a year ago. This is fact, I have data that I can share that supports this.

The error that Free2Innovate is passing on stems from the misperception that “book” or “sticker”  prices are equivalent to “street” or “selling” prices. In a competitive market, discounting from the published price is a common activity. Calculating economic pricing impact using book prices is about as accurate as predicting GDP based on sales forecasts – it can be done, but the data is speculative and can’t be used definitively for any economic analysis that requires any measurable degree of certainty.

There are other equally concerning errors in the CNET piece as well. For instance, the connection between domain name registration and domain name resolution services is far less substantial than what the article implies. At no other level of the DNS are these functions so co-mingled as they are at the TLD level. Somehow, the DNS functions at the second-level, and the root-level, quite nicely without the benefit of massive subsidies from registration activities. Furthermore, IP address registration and resolution functions are completely separate as well – and all of these are managed on a non-profit basis without the benefit of massive infrastructure subsidies from related, but mostly tangental functions.

Whether or not one agrees with the terms of ICANNs settlement with Verisign is almost irrelevant. The important issue is how badly the ICANN Board and Staff handled this matter. The factual problems I point out here, are *exactly* the same factual problems that were promulgated by ICANN’s senior staff in their recommendations to ICANN’s Board of Directors. These same errors and misjudgements figured centrally in the Board’s consideration of this highly important matter.

These problems cannot simply be swept under the rug by pronouncements that ICANN must move on and attend to other work. In fact, it is more critical now than ever before to stop and take a look at the quality of the decisions made, and the quality of the recommendations supplied to the Board to inform their decisions. ICANN must also realize that it is no where near transparent or accountable enough that we can simply take its word that “this is a good decision” when the facts clearly show that ICANN has not followed their own processes, that key data and decision points are not part of the public record and that the ICANN staff, at best, provided the board with an incomplete understanding of the facts relative to the situation.

I’m no longer arguing about the status of the Verisign settlement. In fact, let’s take a deep breath and move on. We lost, they won. Water under the bridge.

Rather, I’m arguing about the future of ICANN. 

I’m arguing against the scope-creep and increasingly opaque shroud that has fallen over an organization that I would formally have called ours. I’m arguing against the encroachment of the United States judiciary system and Department of Commerce onto the public commons, a commons that still belongs to you and I. I’m arguing against an uninformed and unaccountable “coordinator” imposing its world-view and values on the community. I’m arguing against a private California contractor who’s vision of bottom-up, consensus based decision includes “consulting” with its stakeholders via the Washington Post and New York Times – against an organization that views using the courts of California and Virginia and the sub-committee hearing rooms of Washington D.C. as appropriate venues for making its most important sdecisions. I’m arguing against a Board of Directors who feels that it is acceptable to justify their decisions by denigrating the actions of the well-intended people that most support it.

I’m arguing for an organization that balances my interests – personally, and professionally - with the interests of every single other user – public and private, small and large, individual, corporate and governmental - of the Internet’s domain name system. An organization that acts as steward of the community, and caretaker of the public trust. I’m arguing for the vision and ideals that we signed on for when we endorsed the future promised by the Green Paper, White Paper and original ICANN bylaws. Ideals embodied in an organization that can look its stakeholders in the eye and ask it hard questions about all types of situations, good or bad, so that we can be part of the solution – or at the very least, understand the hard and uncomfortable decisions, whether we actually like them or not.

I’m arguing for MyCANN.

And you should be too.