March 1, 2006 8:30 AM PST
ICANN board approves settlement, price hikes
Last modified: March 1, 2006 10:18 AM PST
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The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) voted 9-5 on Tuesday in favor of a settlement agreement that grants VeriSign the right to raise fees on .com domains by 7 percent annually.
The settlement, which arose out of a lawsuit filed by VeriSign against ICANN after the Site Finder flap in 2003, will be lucrative for both organizations. Based on the 48.1 million .com domains currently active at $6 per year, VeriSign is guaranteed at least $288.6 million in annual revenue--with price hikes at a rate that far outpaces inflation.
The deal is not final yet. It has to be approved by the U.S. Commerce Department, and some members of Congress are already urging that it be rejected. Rep. Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat, said in a letter to the Bush administration last month that the proposal has "serious anti-competitive implications."
VeriSign said in a statement that the .com registry agreement is similar to one already approved last year relating to .net. "VeriSign is committed to continuing to build and invest in the Internet infrastructure so it meets the growing needs of Internet users and operators," the statement said.
It's also drawing fire from the registrars that sell .com domains, who allege that ICANN and VeriSign get to cash in--at the general public's expense. (The settlement includes VeriSign's agreement to hand over to ICANN an annual sum of $6 million to $12 million.)
The Coalition for ICANN Transparency (CFIT), a group set up after details of the settlement became public last fall, blasted Tuesday's vote. "Voting in favor of a bad deal doesn't change the deal's dynamics. It just confirms ICANN's refusal to listen to legitimate criticism coming from every corner of the Internet community," said John Berard, the coalition's spokesman.
CFIT has sued VeriSign and ICANN. In court documents filed last month, the group alleges that the .com deal represents an "unlawful agreement to establish a permanent monopoly" in violation of federal antitrust and California unfair competition laws.
ICANN has said that it needed to accept the agreement to settle the lawsuit with VeriSign. "VeriSign has advised ICANN that this proposal represents its last, best offer to settle the pending litigation," ICANN said in a statement in January.
A minor change from an earlier version of the settlement agreement permits the 7 percent price hikes for only four years of the agreement's six-year term. VeriSign would have a presumptive right to have its monopoly renewed after the agreement expires in 2012.
Those voting in favor of the deal included ICANN Chairman Vint Cerf, who is Google's chief Internet evangelist; ICANN Vice Chairman Alejandro Pisanty; and ICANN President Paul Twomey. Voting against it were Raimundo Beca, Susan Crawford, Joichi Ito, Njeri Rionge and Peter Thrush. There was one abstention, by Michael Palage, an attorney in the U.S.
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that monopolies are bad for the people, whether that monopoly is Verisign & ICANN,
or Google & Yahoo, or Visa & Mastercard, etc.
Because when you have no (REAL), choice, then the monopolies can do whatever
they want and you will "just have to take it in the ass...". Whatelse are you going to do?
Not sign up for .com domain names!
Not Advertise on Goole or Yahoo!
Not accept credit card payments!
etc.
So is there no hope!
Well there is a glimmer of hope.
In regard to completion to Verisign & ICANN monopoly I urge you to look into:
www.ORSN.org
In regard to completion to Google & Yahoo monopoly I urge you to look into:
www.anoox.com
Suggestions for alternative to Visa & Mastercard monopoly are welcomed.
After all beside the ICANN & Verisign monopoly over .com & .net the next horrendous
monopoly are Google & Yahoo over searching.
I recall the day when the Internic controlled domains. Then you would send an Email to the Internic in a specified format. Not one cent did it cost back then. Suddenly when the Internet developed a bit we see a lot of greed. What a surprise! But besides the domain name horders and stealers waiting for a mistake to be made like missing a payment past 30 days we see a good reason why the world may not continue tolerate USA control of the Internet. ICANN so I thought had a responsibility to be fair to all its member registrars. The fact is ICANN could justify raising domain allocation rates but to do so in such an unfair way giving one registrar control of pricing is just wrong. It seems to me the building in of language fonts/unicode or whatever developmental changes they need to make for foreign character sets etc and the world at large seems to be best served by being fair to all the registrars. Renewing Verisign's license just seems to be a bad way to do it. I would like to suggest that Internet citizens over the world should let Paul Twomey, head of ICANN(The organization that essentially rules(administers the Internet ) know how the Internet Community feels about this issue by sending him an email or two with our thoughts on the matter: His email address appears to be:
twomey@icann.org
Please remember this decision was made by the responsible party of the internet with respect to .COM domain names made the number one type of domain nameby many browsers manufacturers who prioritize .com domain look-ups ahead of other domains .net, .org, .edu, .biz giving an advantage over other domains. I think that practice also should be stopped. Why should .com be any more important than .edu or .org
I hope this statement can make a difference!