ICANN's Toothless Resolution

Marilyn Cade

From the transcript of the BC members discussion:

CADE:  The idea that ICANN is proposing that they retain the right to refer complaints to anti-competition authorities is toothless. There is the anti-competition authorities have no resources to deal with complaints at this level. And they basically won't take them.

 So we have to assume that that has no teeth at all. It is absolutely worthless. And I can note that there was a meeting between Joe Simms and Anti-Trust Council that I had been working with and Judge (Jeffrey) at the time and they acknowledged they knew that had no implications. But this suggests to us the European anti-trust authorities might feel differently.

Look, I am happy to have a private conversation with the relevant Deputy DOJ who had the - that is Christine Varney who was previously at the FTC. I'm happy to have a conversation with her. My last conversation with her is no way will DOJ be able to accept this kind of referral from ICANN. Now that's, you know, that's a while back and before she was in this position. But I'm happy to have a conversation with her.

My conversations with the FTC goes following. They will entertain compliance but they don't commit to have resources to deal with it and their budgets are being cut significantly.

I'm not going to comment on anti-trust authorities and other anti-competition authorities in other countries except to tell you that of the 15 African countries I asked, none of them said that their authorities could receive complaints on this.