ICANN has put the controversial new contract agreements for the .org, .info and .biz registries back on their agenda for a board meeting next Wednesday (Nov. 22). They seem bent on rushing these things through before anyone has time to react.
You will recall that there was almost unanimous disapproval of these agreements in the first open public commentary period. So ICANN made some minor revisions and opened a very brief new commentary period so they can say few people objected to the "new revised" agreements. I think we need to log our objections to the revised agreements before the meeting which apparently can only be done by sending an email to
revised-biz-info-org-agreements@icann.org
(I understand the "official" comment period ended Nov. 14, but they are still accepting and posting comments).
They should send you a reply with a link to follow to authenticate your email and it can take several hours for your comments to appear on the ICANN public comment page here:
http://forum.icann.org/lists/revised...rg-agreements/
If you need to brush up on the revised contracts and the dangers they pose, read this very detailed protest letter that Phil Corwin, legal counsel for the Internet Commerce Association, sent to the ICANN board on Tuesday:
http://forum.icann.org/lists/revised.../msg00015.html
In addition, ICA President Bob Martin sent a letter today to U.S. Senator Ted Stevens who has already voiced dissatisfaction about ICANN's lack of transparency:
http://www.dnjournal.com/docs/ica-se...nov17-2006.htm
It looks like ICANN plans to keep hammering away at this, hoping to catch domain owners asleep, until they can get away with giving the registries unlimited pricing power over everyone's domains.