Discontinuation of third level domain registrations for the .name TLD [pdf]

It's genuinely hard for me to to tell which parts of your comment are supposed to be a sarcastic reaction and which parts are supposed to be serious, which could well be a failure of mine rather than yours, but, taking it all in good faith:

Summary (if you quote anything in response please try to do it from the details section as it's more accurate):

Many of the fields you may have missed explicitly say such entries will be deleted and when. None of the other fields, when interpreted in the way ICANN uses them in this process rather than personal interpretations, state there will be no impact to such registrations. The exact quantity is not really relevant nor does ICANN need that in the request form to know. The links above are about ICANN reviewing and confirming there was no error, lack of information, or false reporting in the process.

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Details:

Changes to the life-cycles of domains is a question meant to ask if this seeks to modify the life cycle policy, which is a separate type of change from termination of the service as a whole. I.e. this does not seek to change the life cycle policy, it seeks to terminate the service offering completely - making the life cycle policy irrelevant. It'd be like saying "on the form to scrap the car they said they aren't planning to change the paint. That's fraud because after it's scrapped the paint won't be the same!" - it sounds correct if you feed it through a set of boolean gates but falls apart when you realize the request is one about getting rid of the entire car rather than about requesting to change the paint color.

The links greyface- provided are from a request to ICANN to review this particular concern. The Ombudsman looked at the same material you have seen (and more) to find:

> On the basis of the following substantive evaluation, it is evident that ICANN followed the relevant policies and underlying process thoroughly, had sufficient information, and did not rely on false or inaccurate information in taking action on the relevant RSEP Requests.

Importantly, they further say on this particular subject:

> Approximately, 22,000 domain names may seem material, and it may or may not be—in either case, it was disclosed to ICANN by the Registry Operator as part of the collaborative process before submitting its RSEP Requests.

With the further detail for the fields you're referencing:

> Finally, I consider whether ICANN relied on false and/or inaccurate information: None was relied on the subject matter expert told me, nor does it appear that any such information was provided to ICANN relating to these RSEP Requests and their preceding collaborative processes. While the Requestor is of the view that statements provided by the Registry Operator in the RSEP Requests (“no effect on the lifecycle of domains” “no effect on competition” and “no effect on the domain market”) may be false or inaccurate in light of the discontinuation and termination of the approximately 22,000 registrations,28 as discussed in the preceding sections, the approximately 22,000 registrations are not relevant to ICANN’s determination at hand, and further, as also noted above, this information was disclosed to ICANN in the collaboration phase.

There were also several other issues raised in the reconsideration request, all were similarly found to be rooted in invalid understandings of this form or process.

Sets a bad precedent though, right?

You can register both second (example.name) and third (first.last.name) level .name domains. However, once a third level name is registered, they reserve the parent second level domain.

ICANN is involved because Verisign is the registry operator for .name, and the contract between ICANN and Verisign gives ICANN some oversight power over Verisign's registry services. This includes some fairly limited oversight power over what they call "voluntary services", which are services that the registry provides that are not required to be provided by the contract. Apparently the registration of 3rd level domains and the email forwarding service are voluntary services, not services that Verisign is obligated to offer by the contract.

That's not accurate. A valid understanding of the form/process should result in an expectation of a referral to RSTEP to evaluate the impact on security and stability. But that didn't happen.

Assuming I have more money for lawyers than Verisign does