Icann ends agreement with the US government

The Guardian reported today that "Icann – the official body that ultimately controls the development of the internet thanks to its oversight of web addresses such as .com, .net and .org – said today that it was ending its agreement with the US government."

NetChoice issued a press release applauding the U.S. Department of Commerce and ICANN for agreeing to new a framework for accountability.

This has led to what is likely to become a heated discussion at the WarriorForum here.

One of the more alarming predictions came from Dan Rinnert who stated:

"A couple years back, ICANN wanted to allow tiered pricing on domain name registrations, meaning that a registries could charge varying prices for registrations, including inflating the price based on the perceived value of the domain–something which could result in you losing your domain name if you couldn't afford the increased fee, allowing the registry to effectively grab your domain name and auction it off to the highest bidder or whatnot."

George Kirikos made a statement about this type of proposal back in August of 2006:

"Just to show one possible future, if PIR feels pressure or has a desire to clean up porn from .org, it could announce that pussy.org (check its Alexa ranking) will have its renewal price be $1 billion/yr. If it takes 10 years to do it, many would wait, and it would not be considered "suicide" for PIR. Who will stand against that as "we're protecting the internet and children from porn", PIR might argue? Leaving this temptation in the contract will likely become a slippery slope, in my opinion, leading to profit-maximizing behaviour by registries to emulate .tv. Acting in the interests of their shareholders, registries are compelled to maximize profits."

"Acting in the interests of their shareholders, registries are compelled to maximize profits" is of course the most disconcerting idea offered in George's article, although I would imagine that a loophole like that wouldn't get through or at least there would be a lot of counterveiling pressures if any of the worst-case scenarios in his write-up actually came true.