A Day Which Will Live In Infamy -- ICANN Board approves settlement with VeriSign

[GeorgeK]

ICANN's Board voted to accept the latest settlement proposal by a vote of 9 to 5.

http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-28feb06.htm

This truly is a day which will live in infamy, and the 5 who voted against it have my respect. The war's surely not over, though, as the theatre shifts to the Department of Commerce, who would need to approve the contractual changes. That is not assured. Should the DoC reject it (and if they have any folks with economics backgrounds, they would do so in a jiffy), ICANN's days as a body are numbered.

Sincerely,

George

 

[aacommerce]

Could you elaborate on what exactly this means for domainers?

 

[DNGeeks]

In a nutshell, higher prices for domains

 

[GeorgeK]

See www.cfit.info for an archive of many past comments and rationales.

Price is the most visible effect, however there are things like use of the traffic data (e.g. Amazon could buy traffics stats on BN.com, via DNS queries at the registry level), and also the perpetual renewal clauses that are also very important.

Hopefully it will be like WLS, which was approved by ICANN in March 2004, but never has seen the light of day.

 

[dotcomgiant]

True ,

Directors who voted against the approval of the settlement documents were: Raimundo Beca, Susan Crawford, Joichi Ito, Njeri Rionge, and Peter Dengate Thrush.

appreciating their role and the effort .

 

[NameYourself]

According to the below article, the base price charged to registrars will go from $6.00 to $7.86 by 2012.

What other freedoms could VeriSign have seeing as they will be having sole control over the .com registry?

http://www.hostsearch.com/news/bulkregister_news_4164.asp

 

[GeorgeK]

ICANN's Board should read the history of Neville Chamberlain, who said in 1938 "My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time."

 

[actnow]

The U.S. Dept of Commerce will rubber stamp this because Verisign pays alot
in lobbyist fees.

The only thing that will stop the DOC will be pressure from the U.S. Congress.

And, I'm positive most congressmans and senators do not know anything about
this agreement. Much less, what effect this will have on the internet.

If you want to stop the DOC from agreeing to this agreement. I suggest U.S. citizens
contact their congressman and senators.

You might even get a written response from them.

http://www.house.gov/

http://www.senate.gov/

additional post -

I just checked. There is no mention in the Wall Street Journal today about the
agreement.

And, no mention at the CNN site. If you want to raise awareness. Go to
www.CNN.com and search "their site" for Icann. Maybe, the people at CNN
will question why people are searching for info on Icann.

 

[KwelX]

argh..this is horrible IMO if Verisigns get full control of the .com registry. I can just imagine them wetting thier lips getting ready to impliment sitefinder.

I think it could be very damaging to the domian and ppc industry.

 

[NameYourself]

argh..this is horrible IMO if Verisigns get full control of the .com registry. I can just imagine them wetting thier lips getting ready to impliment sitefinder.

I think it could be very damaging to the domian and ppc industry.

This would impact any new registrations people had hoped to get for traffic names. As verisign would be monitoring new queries for any unregistered .coms and probably register them for themselves. Just a little unfair to the rest of the world I might say.

 

[KwelX]

This would impact any new registrations people had hoped to get for traffic names. As verisign would be monitoring new queries for any unregistered .coms and probably register them for themselves. Just a little unfair to the rest of the world I might say.

They will not monitor for queries, that's what I do.:'(

They, having complete comtrol over the .com registry, will simply wildcard ALL unregistered .com's (NXDomains) to sitefinder.

 

[Bill Roy]

Can any other EU citizens comment on this, but it sounds like it would breach several basic EU laws! If this is so this could well lead to the demise of US control of the net, just to think VeriSign may have won a truely Pyrric victory, oh what a glorious day that would turn out to be.

Also, this would seem to be a boost for the ccTLD's, and they are already starting to rise because of the lack of availabilty of good .com's.

My feelings are therefore that this is a good thing (especially as I concentrate ccTLD's as a domainer).

BillBo

 

[JMJ]

I can't believe they even put it to a vote after all of the public outcry not to sign. Goes to show all who voted knew it means a pay raise for themselves in atleast one form. It's all complete BS in my mind.

 

[sasquatch]

ICANN's Board voted to accept the latest settlement I'm glad ICANN did what they did and I fully approve of upcoming domain registration price increase by VeriSign.

They would have been idiots not to get a piece of action after seeing egomaniac Bob Parsons from GD paying for not one, but two Superbowl ads, and witnessing the rest of the domain circus whereby the smart ass guys swear only by .com names, and even small time nobodies have enough money to register thousands of names, not to mention those individual serial registrators (Name Admin, Unasi, Vaxis) who ammas as many as 500,000 names each.

If you have enough money to register and renew 500,000 domains, you will have enough money to pay this increase.

Some of the Americans on this board love to talk about capitalism and market forces, but only when it suits them, when it doesn't they complain. Well these are the market forces in action my friends. Demand increases, prices goes up. arty:

 

[GeorgeK]

Monopolies aren't "market forces". If one's water bill went up, without cost justification, one would also complain.

Bob Parsons operates in at least 2 ultra-competitive markets (domain registrations, as a registrar, and also in webhosting). He deserves his success. Congratulating monopolies for raising prices, when their costs are going down, is something completely different.

 

[JMJ]

Godaddy's share of a new registration probably amounts to 20% of what Verisign already gets and they don't have to support anyone. It's not just a small price increase it's giving them the keys to essentially do whatever they wish and get paid more to do it. This is just one step once they get over this hurdle they will milk every dime they can from every imaginable "service" they can add. And as the past has shown once Verisgn does it everyone will do it. So it's pouring a foundation for price increases and additional core registry services across the board.

 

[ohkus]

http://www.betanews.com/article/In_Split_Vote_ICANN_Approves_VeriSign_Deal/1141236350

My question is how come no registrar or group of registrars have sued to stop this or postpone it?

 

[actnow]

Since, Verisign has found out that they can bully thru anything they want. The next thing you will see will be CLS. And, If I remember correctly, Verisign
gets 10% of the winning bid prices of all new dropping domains.

I speculate that the price increase is a drop in the bucket compared to what they will make from drops. Imagine. 10% of all quality domains that drop.

In a couple years, Verisign will try to figure out how they can "force" quality names to drop so the can get 10% of the value. Maybe, they will strictly enforce whois data. So, if your address or phone number is incorrect, they can automatically delete your name.

At this point, Verisign can do whatever they want.

I'm sure in Verisign's board room, they think the only other operation that has a better deal than them is the U.S. Federal Reserve.

 

[JMJ]

The next thing you will see will be CLS. And, If I remember correctly, Verisign
gets 10% of the winning bid prices of all new dropping domains.

In a couple years, Verisign will try to figure out how they can "force" quality names to drop so the can get 10% of the value. Maybe, they will strictly enforce whois data.

No need to force they already have plans in CLS for names to be added during active status therefore eliminating the need to aftermarket brokers and earning a commision off every sell. My guess is this will happen as soon as CLS happens.

 

[Dave Zan]

My question is how come no registrar or group of registrars have sued to stop this or postpone it?

Just wait and see. :-D