[governance] Appeals Court Revives the CFIT Anti-Trust Suit

[Michael Gurstein]

Hi,

I'm not sure that I agree... For those of us without a professional interest
in the subject matter here (and other things to be doing) the occasional
background piece or reference or URL for providing context can be extremely
valuable--the piece that Pranesh sent along certainly would, to my mind, fit
within that category. 

Especially in light of current/recent discussons.

MBG

-----Original Message-----
From: McTim [mailto:dogwallah at gmail.com] 
Sent: Saturday, June 06, 2009 1:25 PM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Pranesh Prakash
Subject: Re: [governance] Appeals Court Revives the CFIT Anti-Trust Suit 


All,

If I want to read CircleID or IGP blogs I do that on my own.

Please don't just regurgitate, it's bad form, really.

If you feel you must, then at the very least,
make some editorial comment about what you insist on posting.

-- 
Cheers,

McTim
"A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A route
indicates how we get there."  Jon Postel


On 6/6/09, Pranesh Prakash <pranesh at cis-india.org> wrote:
> From:  
> <http://www.circleid.com/posts/print/20090605_appeals_court_revives_cf
> it_anti_trust_suit_against_verisign/>
>
>  Appeals Court Revives the CFIT Anti-Trust Suit Against VeriSign  Jun 
> 05, 2009 4:19 PM PDT
>
>  By John Levine
>
>  Back in 2005 an organization called the Coalition for Internet  
> Transparency (CFIT) burst upon the scene at the Vancouver ICANN 
> meeting,  and filed an anti-trust suit against VeriSign for their 
> monopoly control  of the .COM registry and of the market in expiring 
> .COM domains. They  didn't do very well in the trial court, which 
> granted Verisign's motion  to dismiss the case. But yesterday the 
> Ninth Circuit reversed the trial  court and put the suit back on 
> track.
>
>  In the decision [PDF], a three judge panel told the district court 
> that  the suit has enough basis to proceed. CFIT claims that VeriSign 
> engaged  in a variety of predatory conduct including financial 
> pressure,  astroturf lobbying, and vexatious lawsuits to get ICANN to 
> renew  the .COM agreement on very favorable terms, including what is 
> in  practice eternal renewal of the contract with annual price 
> increases. As  part of that process, VeriSign settled the suit, paid 
> ICANN several  million dollars, and promised never to lobby against 
> ICANN again.
>
>  In the 20 page decision, the appeals court basically said that CFIT's  
> claims about the .COM renewal, the domain market, and the expiring  
> domain market were plausible, crediting a brief from the Internet  
> Commerce Association for explaining the expiring domain market to 
> them.  They note that an earlier case from 2001 that didn't find a 
> separate  market in expiring domains appears no longer relevant, since 
> the domain  market has evolved a lot since then.
>
>  CFIT made similar claims about the .NET market, which the appeals 
> court  found less persuasive, so they instructed the trial court to 
> look at  them again and decide whether they should be dismissed or 
> continue. But  the case with respect to .COM definitely is going 
> ahead.
>
>  This suit could have a huge effect on the domain market, since there  
> were credible bidders who said they could run the .COM registry for $3  
> per name, under half of what VeriSign charges. It is also a huge  
> embarassment for ICANN, since it shows them to be inept, corrupt, or  
> both when managing the .COM domain which, due to its dominance, is the  
> most important thing they do. In the original version of the suit 
> ICANN  was a defendant, but they were dropped a few years ago so now 
> they're  just an uncomfortable observer.
>
>  Perversely, if CFIT gets its way, ICANN could come out ahead. They 
> get a  fixed 20 cents per domain, unrelated to the $6.42 that VeriSign  
> currently charges. If the price were to drop to $3, ICANN would still  
> get their 20 cents, and presumably if the price were a lot lower,  
> there'd be a lot more registrations.
>
>  CFIT's attorney is Bret Fausett, who's been an active ICANN observer  
> just about since the beginning, and gets great credit for this  
> surprising reversal. CFIT themselves, despite their name, is about as  
> opaque an organization as there is, having a broken web site and no  
> other public presence I can find. A 2005 article in The Register by  
> Kieren McCarthy (back when he was a journalist) claims it's funded by  
> Rob Hall, founder of momentous.ca/pool.com, a large registrar that 
> does  a lot of business with domain speculators and provides a popular 
> domain  sniping service to grab expiring domains. Although I am not a 
> great fan  of the speculators, I'm no fan of VeriSign either, and I 
> look forward to  the progress of this suit, not the least for the 
> interesting documents  that are likely to appear in the discovery 
> stage.
>
>
>  --
>  Pranesh Prakash
>  Programme Manager
>  Centre for Internet and Society
>  W: http://cis-india.org | T: +91 80 40926283
>
>
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