The letter, signed by the same firm which brought the Smiley case against NeuLevel claiming that .biz was an illegal lottery, demands that ICANN delay action of WLS -- which is on the agenda for tomorrow's board meeting. Or else.

It also accuses ICANN of failing to put competitive restrictions on VeriSign, which could engage in self-dealing. That might be true, but is it actionable? Perhaps only to the extent that the right to complain comes from the registrars' agreements with ICANN? Or perhaps on some sort of anti-trust theory?

Less plausibly, at least on first reading, the letter argues that the WLS is an illegal lottery (dropping a name doesn't seem to me to be a random event; whether a given name becomes available is based on the decision of a specific person. On the other hand, the courts are surprisingly sensitive to these claims.). [Update: see the comments below -- annonymous makes a good case that the lottery claim may be better than I thought.] And it argues that WLS "defrauds consumers" since it includes taking money for periods in which the domain is paid-up and hence can't become available, plus could involve waiting for a trademarked name which would be lost through the UDRP or other proceedings. (Shooting from the hip, I'd have thought that the first is easily cured by disclosure, and the latter is too speculative, and is covered by caveat emptor?).

Let's not kid anyone, this is all about poaching [icannwatch.org] traffic, buying a McDonalds to turn it into a strip joint, while conveniently neglecting to take down the original sign. The anon registrars should be happy it'll be VeriSign that eventually gets sued. -g