U.S. OKs VeriSign Domain Deal

mduell writes: "The U.S. government approved a deal allowing top Internet domain registrar VeriSign to retain control of the lucrative ".com" Web addresses, the Commerce Department said Friday." ICANNwatch has a couple of stories about the deal finally reached, and the steps taken by the Commerce Department to promote competition in the DNS.

Comments

Exactly what is bad about this?

[Mike Schiraldi]

Under the old plan, Verisign had a monopoly on being the registry for .com, .net, and .org until 2007. Now, they only have a monopoly on .com until 2007. What are you people complaining about?

The part of Verisign that people seem to have a problem with is the Registrar. This is -not- a monopoly. If you don't like the customer service, don't use it.

The part of Verisign that is a monopoly is the Registry. This is not a part that any of you interact with, unless you work for a registrar.

Again, how is any of this bad? If you don't like the Verisign registrar, don't use it. If you don't like the registry, be happy with this deal, because it gives Verisign's registry -less- power.

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Re:What does this mean for OpenSRS et al?

[Mike Schiraldi]

No, absolutely not. The parent post is anything but "Insightful".

There are two parts - one is the Verisign registrar, which is all 99% of the world ever interacts with. This registrar has dozens of competitors, including OpenSRS.

There's also the Verisign registry, which is what all the registrars talk to, in order to keep things in sync.

Under the old plan, Verisign could either keep control of the .com, .org, and .net registry until 2004 and keep its registrar business, or it could sell the registrar and keep the registry of .com, .net, and .org until 2007.

Under the new plan, Verisign phases out control of the .org and .net registry, and in return gets to keep the .com registry until 2007 as well as continue running the registrar business.

And yes, there are strict regulations in place to keep the Verisign registry from giving special treatment to the Verisign registrar.

If you don't like the Verisign registrar, don't use it. It's not a monopoly. Only the Verisign registry is, and nobody ever complains about that.

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Re:Verisign will be audited

[hillct]

People complain about the monsterously huge companies that manage the DNS infastructure. Well, let's face it, what small company could manage this? There is a minimum efficient scale associated with management of a system like DNS TLDs. The propogation delays introduced by distribution of registrars was bad enough. I'm not a proponant of allowing a single company to manage the system, nor am I a proponant of big government in general, but there are certain things that lend themselves to centralized management. TLDs are examples of such things. Greater overall value to the public is derived from efficient centralized management.

There certainly does need to be oversight and this solution seems to adress that issue.

--CTH

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