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 VeriSign Claims ICANN Prejudiced in .Net Operator
posted by michael on Monday August 30 2004, @08:01PM
Steven Forrest writes "The battle for .net is heating up, as VeriSign is accusing ICANN of showing prejudice in the selection process. Kevin C. Golden, vice president and associate general counsel for VeriSign, has sent a lengthy letter (10-page PDF) to ICANN's general counsel, John Jeffrey, outlining a series of objections to ICANN's criteria for selecting the next .net registry operator. Here are the opening paragraphs, with a few links added by me."
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"Mr. Jeffrey: I write to express our objections to and continuing concerns about the process employed to date to choose a registry operator for the .net registry, including the Final Report , "Designating a Successor Operator for the .net Registry," published by the GNSO, as well as past actions of ICANN. The process and criteria outlined in the Final Report, as well as the process followed by ICANN leading up to the publication of the Final Report, fail to comply with the procedural and substantive requirements of the existing .net Registry Agreement , with the Memorandum of Understanding between ICANN and the Department of Commerce (the "MOU"), and with ICANN's own Bylaws .
VeriSign previously set forth procedural and substantive deficiencies in the ICANN process for selecting a .net registry operator in VeriSign's June 18, 2004 formal comments in response to the GNSO .net subcommittee's request for comments. Further, in a letter to ICANN dated June 24, 2004, VeriSign objected to steps in the process taken by ICANN and set forth requirements for the process based on the .net Registry Agreement, the MOU, and ICANN's Bylaws. In each instance, VeriSign's objections have been largely ignored, and ICANN has made no attempt to remedy the prejudice to the selection process that already has occurred. As of today, that June 24 letter is not posted on ICANN's correspondence index web page, although ICANN has had more than a month to post it.
I'd bet on seeing the rest of the memo repeated in a future legal filing if ICANN doesn't follow procedure to the letter and assigns the .net registry contract to someone other than VeriSign."
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VeriSign Claims ICANN Prejudiced in .Net Operator
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So, the vendor (VeriSign) sues the customer (ICANN), and then gets complains because the customer doesn't like them anymore?
Am I missing something here?
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The legal battle over VeriSign’s ability to innovate and ICANN’s authority to regulate will now continue in state court. At the same time VeriSign’s current contract to operate the .Net Registry expires in June 2005. ICANN has therefore had to put forth a process to select an entity to operate that registry when the current agreement expires. To any observer there has to be a question about ICANN’s ability to be objective given the current litigation.
In the national security environment as it exists today the capabilities of the operator of the .Net Registry have far reaching implications. That fact has to be a key focus of this process. Yet the current litigation that exists between the parties begs the question: How are citizens and the federal government to assured that ICANN can look beyond litigation and other widespread criticism to make a fair judgment? This is a critical decision. Under the best of circumstances ICANN’s ability to make reasoned judgments has been questioned. Now in a wartime setting with serious national security issues we have left it to ICANN to decide the future of the operation of the.Net Registry. That is a very troubling scenario and it is made even more troubling by the overlay of the existing litigation and the potential for that litigation to poison the process.
The issues that surround ICANN have not gone away. They continue to be a commercial concern to the business community. In addition, however in the current national security environment, we need to be sure that the .Net registry is secure and that we are prepared to adapt to make sure that it continues to operate under whatever circumstances we may face.
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