Congressional Hearing on ICANN-Verisign Settlement

On WEDNESDAY, JUNE 7, 2006. the House Committee on Small Business held a hearing entitled “Contracting the Internet: Does ICANN create a barrier to small business?” The topic of the hearing was primarily the price increase component of the ICANN-VeriSign Settlement.

Testifying before the committee were:

Becky Burr - primarily on historical background issues.

John Jeffrey - ICANN General Counsel

Rick White - Former US Congressman and current policy advisor to Verisign

Champ Mitchell - CEO of Network Solutions

Craig Goren - CEO, Clarity Consulting, Inc.

Steve DelBianco - Executive Director, NetChoice

The latter two witnesses were interesting folks, who were primarily there to testify that small businesses overwhelmingly support paying more for domain registrations because the proposed increases permitted in the contract is not a lot of money. That of course, depends on whether you on the paying end or the receiving end. Imagine, for a moment, that Verizon decided to tack on a couple of extra dollars on their long distance bills, oh, just because they felt like it. Would it be the end of the world for their customers? Probably not. But Mr. Goren and Mr. Delbianco thundered away that an extra couple of dollars for domain registrations will make the internet work better, and will end Cyber Squatting, DOS attacks, and probably cut down on illegal immigration, tooth decay, and attacks by wild bears.

Many of the usual suspects were in attendance:

including Marilyn Cade; Michael Palage (noted private citizen and conscientious abstainer); Jeff Neuman; an ICANN brigade consisting of John Jeffrey, Kurt Pritz, and Dan Halloran; Marc Ostrofsky of IREIT.

I will be posting links to the written versions of the testimony later today.

John Jeffrey provided much-needed comic relief, by "clarifying" the fact that the ICANN-VeriSign Settlement does not actually require VeriSign to increase prices, but merely permits them to do so, should they believe that a price increase in .com is desirable...

Note added by Craig Goren:

Also happy to answer any questions for you. My perspective wasn't that the price hike was arbitrarily reasonable and therefore should be approved, it was that this issue was before the small business committee, and although there may be reasons for congress to not approve this private contract, it should NOT do so in the name of small business pricing.