No Subject

This is wrong and what type of legititimacy does ICANN's board have if it forces through a proposal before it was fully accepted and without the support of Small businesses and individuals. Why should individuals and growing companies that may lead the next generation of industries be punished for thinking ahead of trailing edge businesses and slow corporations?

To have a URL taken away because the trailing edge companies had no recognition of the market shifts ahead is their problem.

If the company does not look ahead to its future competitiveness, whether its new products, upgrades, or shifting market demographics, the company is punished by low sales and lowered valuation and management is fired.

Effectively: you reap what you sow. In this market driven economy, why should the government or a government type body make the decision to support and ultimately, the privately subsidize, company's laggardly use of the Internet.

Although I am not fully supportive of the sale of URLs for tens of millions of dollars, I believe that this trade is an important issue in economics. (Remember this is a mistake by companies that did not pay attention to market and product issues that may affect them.)

Finally, remember this example: Consider a smart high school student or housewife or small business. They checked out the Internet early and then became part of the community. This person paid $100 a year for begood.com and then put in multiple hours either thinking about the URL or actually developing a small site. Large corporate company BeGood, a well respected MNC with an excellent reputation, does not move their business or marketing model onto the web- an oversight shared equally by the IS guys and the board/management. The individual who purchased the URL has possession of it for two years and then has it taken away from him by BeGood. If begood wants that URL, they should pay a reasonable market rate and if that person does not want to give up the site, well that's market economics. There are many URLs that are not taken.

Why should a building block of the Internet (community) and perhaps the next generation of technology be subjugated to the interests of trailing-edge, large monolithic, yesterday's news companies?

This deal smells of collusion and obviously is a typical Ester Dyson decision (half cocked and totally autocratic- the same way she invested...). There has to be a middle path here with the equal consideration of the rights and responsibilities of the early adopters and community. Why should we subsidize poor business decisions?

RLS- (I only own one URL for a non-profit site and do not trade in URLs)