[Comments-com-amendment-3-03jan20] Say NO to Verisign conflict of interest

[CRASH IT Admin]

Dear sirs,

I just heard about this proposed amendent. I'm a minor domain name 
consumer (a Christian missionary in Japan), but I do a lot of web 
building, and as a result, I personally own four .COM domain names for 
missions activities and am involved in managing IT for other groups 
using three more .COMs (one of which I am writing from). All are small 
volunteer ministries with little or no income and no influence in the 
overall administration of the internet, so we trust groups like ICANN to 
administer wisely. (I also own or manage multiple .ORG and .NET domains 
in the same way - those are not under fire at the moment, but I can't 
help but wonder if they might be next, since .net is also operated by 
Verisign and PIR will soon become for-profit.)

 From what I understand, it sounds like Verisign agreed to give you 
money in exchange for a ruling change to allow them more freedom in 
pricing. Yes, I know it wasn't technically "in exchange", but it sure 
smells like a bribe to those of us on the outside.

It also would allow Verisign to operate directly in the registration 
business (as a reseller), controlling the system much more than should 
be permitted. Yes, I'm aware that operators of new gTLDs started since 
2012 have been able to do this (that doesn't seem proper either - I feel 
that gTLD operation and domain name sales should be completely separate 
to prevent conflict of interest, but that's water under the bridge now), 
but .COM is 42% of all domain names - no single company should have that 
much control over the internet. I would feel more comfortable if gTLD 
operation were not done by for-profit corporations at all, but that's 
clearly an unrealistic dream at this point.

In addition, I'm concerned about the lack of transparency. The 
deliberations were apparently made privately with only Verisign, and 
many details about the agreement are still not publicly available. The 
internet affects everyone, and negotiations of this nature should be 
public, or at least involve additional affected parties, so that 
decisions are fair and open.

Please preserve the integrity of domain name management by preventing 
conflicts of interest and keeping discussions transparent and open. 
Thank you.

Regards,
Karen Ellrick
(Domains I own or manage: proverbs2525.org, danellrick.com, l4jp.com, 
14jp.com, thinkword.com, crashjapan.com/crashjapan.org/crashjapan.net, 
oicjapan.org/oicjapan.com, japanharvest.org/japanharvest.com, 
prayersummitsjapan.net)


*CRASH Japan*
crashjapan.com
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