Does anybody have any idea what is going on here?
A copy of this notification is published on the web at
http://www.worldcourt4humanrights.com/icannaccc.html

Best regards
Patrick Corliss

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Notification to Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
Monday 20 November 2000

from Len Lindon, Barrister to Matthew Healey, Enforcement,
melcompl§accc.gov.au

Summary

1. ICANN, a California corporation, will be at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre
from Sunday 10 March to Wednesday 13 March 2001.

2. The current dsn system is capable of millions of domain names and there are
many "alternative/open root server" operators and users. There could and
should be many more operators and users.

3. ICANN has deliberately and knowingly undermined, sabotaged and sought to
destroy these competitors. And continues to do so.

4. auDA is a Victorian corporation and is closely associated with ICANN.

5. It appears that auDA has similar competitors and is engaging in similar
anticompetitive activities.

6. These anticompetitive activities are prohibited by the Trade Practices Act
of Australia, 1974:

Section 45 Contracts, arrangements or understandings that restrict dealings or
affect competition.

Section 45B Covenants affecting competition.

Section 45D Secondary boycotts for the purpose of causing substantial loss or
damage.

Section 45DA Secondary boycotts for the purpose of causing substantial
lessening of competition.

Section 45E Prohibition of contracts, arrangements or understandings affecting
the supply or acquisition of goods or services.

Section 46 Misuse of market power.

Section 51AC Unconscionable conduct in business transactions.

Section 51AD Contravention of industry codes.

7. Having read much of the available evidence, and having personally witnessed
some of these anticompetitive activities, I am satisfied that each corporation
is in breach of each section and I now submit this request for immediate
action.

Len Lindon 20.xi.00 Melbourne

A copy of this notification is published on the web at
http://www.worldcourt4humanrights.com/icannaccc.html

World Court for Human Rights

From: Len Lindon info§humanrights.com.au
Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 10:37:52 +1100
To: melcompl§accc.gov.au
Cc: info§clickhumanrights.com
Subject: Notification re ICANN/auDA (attention Matthew Healey)

Some key reference documents for this Notification:

1. Law Professor Michael Froomkin, 50 Duke Law Journal 17-184, nb pp64-65 (and
note fn citing Karl Auerback, newly elected ICANN Board Member, estimate of at
least 1 million domains with current dns technology)

2. Law Professor Milton Mueller, "Rough Justice" study (cited in urls below)

3. http://www.youcann.org/instructions.html

4. http://icbtollfree.com/

5. http://icannwatch.org

6. http://www.cookreport.com/icannoverall.shtml

Useful starting point for this Notification:

The Wall Street Journal
Op-Ed
By Declan McCullagh, Washington bureau chief for Wired.com.
Monday, November 20, 2000
[this article is on the web at, inter alia,
http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=00/11/20/1714249


If there's one thing on which the quarrelsome geeks who run the Internet can
agree, it's that the online world badly needs some new suffixes to supplement
the overcrowded .com, .org, and .net.

As far back as the mid-1990s, frustrated engineers and entrepreneurs proposed
creating additional suffixes, known as generic top level domains (GTLDs) in
the unflattering vernacular of Webheads. Five years, dozens of false starts,
and a considerable amount of confusion later, a nonprofit group backed by the
U.S. government has finally chosen seven new GTLDs. Its decision last week
marks the first move toward relieving .com's congestion.

So why is almost nobody happy?

One reason is that the new suffixes approved by the Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers are woefully inadequate. Instead of picking GTLDs
that would meet market demand, ICANN decided to approve the lackluster set of
.aero, .biz, .coop, .info, .museum, .name, and .pro instead. (If these were
proposed brand names, you can bet most would fail the first focus group test.)
Any more additions, ICANN's board members indicated, would not be approved
until late 2001.

This is absurd. Technology experts occasionally wrangle over how many GTLDs
the current setup can include, with the better estimates in the millions, but
few doubt that the domain name system can handle tens of thousands of new
suffixes without catastrophe.

ICANN could easily have taken a more careful look at more than 100 GTLD
applications-each of the 47 hopefuls, some of whom suggested multiple names,
paid $50,000 for the chance-it received in advance of last week's meeting. Or
it could have reduced the application fee and thereby attracted more
submissions. Approving more GTLDs would have been sensible, since .com domain
names are in such terribly short supply. A Wired.com survey conducted in April
1999 found that of 25,500 standard dictionary words, only 1,760 were still
available, and the problem of finding even a multiple-word domain name is more
acute today.

"In an ideal world, they would have awarded all nonconflicting applications
that met objective feasibility requirements," says Milton Mueller, a professor
at Syracuse University. "Things that didn't break the system."

At a time when the market is demanding more competition and an end to this
artificial scarcity, ICANN is responding far too sluggishly. That keeps a
premium on .com and makes it more expensive for new entrants in the
marketplace to obtain prime online real estate. It also has the effect of
continuing the monopoly status of VeriSign's Network Solutions, which has a
lucrative Commerce Department-granted right to collect $6 a year on each of
the .com, .org, and .net domain names in use. (No wonder VeriSign paid $21
billion to buy Network Solutions earlier this year.)

Another problem is a predictable one: Politics. In the past, some of ICANN's
duties had been handled by various federal agencies. Unlike what some
regulatory enthusiasts have suggested, however, the solution is not
encouraging the government to again become directly involved in this process.
A wiser alternative is a complete or near-complete privatization of these
functions.

ICANN has begun to act as a de facto extension of the Commerce Department,
which by law has ultimate approval over additional GTLDs. That has given
Internet users the worst of both worlds None of the competitive checks and
balances that the marketplace would provide, and none of the procedural
protections of government.

This quasi-governmental role is already threatening to derail, or at least
delay, the arrival of new GTLDs. Rep. Ed Markey (D., Mass.) last week asked
the Commerce Department not to approve any new suffixes until it reviews the
level of competition in the domain registration business. When the World
Health Organization learned it didn't receive the hoped-for .health domain, it
hinted it would take legal action. At least a few other disappointed GTLD
hopefuls are likely to feel the same way. Ralph Nader's Consumer Project on
Technology is unhappy that .union didn't make it. And so on.

There are a few ways out of this mess. Not all nations are overjoyed about the
White House having a veto over ostensibly global top-level domains, so the
process could be handed to the United Nations instead. But a Republican
Congress may not go along, and, besides, the U.N. has displayed pro-Net-tax
tendencies and scant appreciation for free expression.

If ICANN and the Commerce Department move too slowly, frustrated businesses
could turn to alternative solutions. The OpenNIC project, which requires
tech-savvy users to reconfigure their computers, already supports alternative
GTLDs including .parody, .oss (for open-source projects), and .geek (still
pending). But that risks balkanizing the Internet: On two different machines,
the same domain name could lead to two different Websites.

Perhaps the best suggestion comes from Michael Froomkin, a professor of law at
the University of Miami and a co-founder of the icannwatch.org Website. He
suggests a round-robin process in which nations and non-profit groups would
take turns adding a fixed number of new GTLDs, and ICANN would merely keep
track of the master list. The number of domains added could double each round.
The process might not make everyone happy, but it would have one important
benefit: It might actually work.

[References supplied by Len Lindon, Barrister, to Matthew Healey, Enforcement
via melcompl§accc.gov.au at 10.37am local time, Melbourne, Tuesday 21 November
2000]

Click Human Rights

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