I presume that most of you will have read the accreditation guidelines by now. I wondered if there were any comments or analysis. I just got round to sitting down with it and am amazed by what I find. I will do an analysis at the weekend, but my initial thoughts are: 1. It is possible that the introduction of this will end some of our businesses outright 2. We will be asked to entangle ourselves deep in legal contractual relationships that up to now have not existed - for the same result 3. NSI will continue to control absolutely the .com/.org/.net registry to up to and including the interface to the registry and the legal terms on which we will be able to use it 4. ICANN will control the ability of all of us to do business. They will have a right to end our Accreditation at any time 5. ICANN will insist on the submission of 'business plans' before we are even allowed to register names. 6. We will have to pay ICANN for every name as well as the Registry 7. We will have to submit information to everyone involved about our clients. This includes NSI and ICANN. 8. Our clients will have to submit to binding arbitration for every name dispute There's a lot more. My view is that we are about to entangle deep deep into a nightmare bureaucracy that has no reason to exist. ICANN is setting about regulating the relationships between the 'Registrars' (that is, our existing and happily running businesses) and their clients. What ICANN should be doing in my view is regulating the relationship between the Registry and the Registrars. I have tens of thousands of happy clients. I deal with all the Registries in the world. I actually deal with NSI very happily. I don't think we need a huge new layer of bureaucracy - we need an open and regulated relationship between the Registry and the Registrars. That's it. This is severely spooky. Ivan Ivan Pope [EMAIL PROTECTED] NETNAMES * The INTERNATIONAL DOMAIN NAME REGISTRY http://www.netnames.com UK Freephone 0800 269049 180-182 Tottenham Court Road London W1P 9LE UK +44 171 291 3900 +44 171 291 3939 Fax It's not about building a better mousetrap, it's about redefining the mouse.
