[bc-gnso] More garbage press releases released as an Independent Economic Reports

[George Kirikos]

Hi folks,

ICANN posted two more garbage press releases masquerading as
independent economic reports about new gTLDs, see:

http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-06jun09-en.htm

Of course, to no one's surprise, the reports simply justified their
original papers. They ignored and dismissed the significant concerns
raised by the community, once again. ICANN never even posted a summary
or analysis of the original comments that were submitted:

http://forum.icann.org/lists/competition-pricing-prelim/

The author completely ignored the issue of tiered pricing, and did not
investigate the magnitude of switching costs (e.g. for a company to
switch from Cars.com or Hotels.com to NewCo.cars or NewBiz.hotels if
the registry operator for .com was allowed to charge different prices
for each domain name, which would be the monopolist's optimal strategy
if price caps were eliminated). Indeed, Dr. Carlton's entire report is
based on the false assumption that the all would be charged identical
prices. Paragraph 69 states:

"Ex ante competition serves to protect both uninformed consumers,
which face greater risk of opportunistic price increases, as well as
better informed consumers BECAUSE BOTH SETS OF CONSUMERS PAY THE SAME
PRICES." (emphasis added)

In our original comments, we challenged the author, and ICANN itself,
to disclose their own switching costs, by accepting/rejecting direct
offers to purchase their domain names:

http://forum.icann.org/lists/competition-pricing-prelim/msg00000.html

Of course, they ignored this, and simply wave their hands and pretend
that switching costs are insignificant or are exaggerated. It appears
ICANN is prepared to say anything in order to justify new gTLDs.

Sincerely,

George Kirikos
416-588-0269
http://www.leap.com/