Daily Domain Name Registration Blog

I like to keep an eye on the ongoing discussion between ICANN and VeriSign. VeriSign got told off by ICANN in 2003 for quietly hijacking all traffic to non-existent .com and .net domain names using a sneaky service called Site Finder.

VeriSign then launched a lawsuit against ICANN, claiming that they needed more detail about what they were and weren’t allowed to do as the official controller of the .com and .net registries.

Four years later, a solution is still pending. In late 2005, ICANN and VeriSign offered their proposed settlement up for public scrutiny, and it was quite worrying: VeriSign would be allowed to increase prices by 7% in four of the coming years, without justifying the new costs to the public. What is more, unlike with every other registry in the world, other companies will not be offered the opportunity to bid for control of the .com and .net registries when VeriSign’s contract comes up for renewal. Emails to ICANN about the settlement are not nearly as frequent as they were in 2005, but they are still trickling in, and they are almost universally negative.

There are two main worries for the domain consumer, as far as I can tell. Firstly, VeriSign will almost certainly use its ticket to increase prices. As far as I’m concerned, this is unacceptable; .com domain prices should be falling, if anything, and the only reasonable increases I can imagine are to cope with inflation.

The second, and in my opinion, more serious concern for the domainer is that VeriSign is heading for a monopoly. Without healthy competition with other companies who might want to bid for the registry, VeriSign can hike prices and make changes wherever it chooses, without fear of consequences. It bothers me that the profoundly important public system that is the Internet is being controlled, in considerable proportion, by a non-elected profit-making organisation who has no competitors. This is very unhealthy.

Farming out the registries for the most popular gTLDs to profit-making organisations has always been troubling, but in the case of VeriSign, there is the additional concern of dense collaboration with ICANN, which seems to be held in thrall by the rumbles of VeriSign’s court action threats. Without competition, or a not-for-profit organisation to manage the registries, it’s the public that will suffer.

Interestingly, dotMobi seems to have hired ex-VeriSign Business Operations VP Trey Harvin to be its brand new CEO. It’ll be interesting to see if any of VeriSign’s charming personality will come with him.