I slogged through it so you don't have to -- ICANN Vertical Integration WG for dummies

[brunner at nic-naa.net (Eric Brunner-Williams)]

On 7/26/10 12:45 PM, Jorge Amodio wrote:
> You forgot the fifth option.
>
> Invade a country (invasion is not strictly required) and take over
> control of their ccTLD which probably does not have an agreement with
> ICANN so you can charge and do as you please. Many of the greedy
> registrars will be more than happy to sell the name ...

Umm, I wish there had been more people who paid attention when the .iq 
registry was subject to ... a voluntary change of control resulting in 
... things being done as one pleased.

But I do take your point about .co/.com, and in all fairness, it is a 
decade delayed favor returned by NeuStar to Verisign for the .bz/.biz 
"collaborative marketing" ploy of 2001.

When Hewlett-Packard wrote to ICANN earlier this year that it should 
get .hp, the obvious rejoinder was "Buy a country like everyone else, 
submit a change request to the iso3166/MA, and do business under .hp, 
your new country code property." Apparently HP didn't want to actually 
buy a country first. Cheapskates.

Now seriously, just how many pages of the IV Initial Report did you 
read before coming up with "the fifth option"?

Eric