.net Domain Up For Grabs

belmolis writes " The New York Times is reporting that the bidding is on for the .net domain currently administered by VeriSign. VeriSign's current contract expires June 30th; applications are due today. Three companies are known to be interested: NeuStar, which currently manages .biz, Afilias, which manages .info, and Denic eG, a non-profit that manages the German .de domain. ICANN is bending over backward to avoid any suggestion of bias due to its conflict with VeriSign over VeriSign's Site Finder "service" and has appointed an independent team to evaluate the applications. VeriSign has been lobbying hard to keep the domain and is reported to have received letters of support from Microsoft and IBM."

Comments

Just not verisign

[digitalgimpus]

When the get to much power they take advantage (sitefinder). IMHO when a company has poor ethics, they like to show it.

They showed us their ethics... we can do better. Lets look at other companies.

Re:Just not verisign

[leonmergen]

They showed us their ethics... we can do better. Lets look at other companies.

The .net registration right is up for bid... not vote. It's not like we have a choice over who's going to get the rights, it's who pays most.

Re:Just not verisign

[gowen]

Well, given the number of scammers that use .biz and .info websites to phish for bank account details (and how far from their designed roles .biz and .info have drifted), I don't think the alternatives are terribly ethically sound either,

Re:Just not verisign

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems some people don't understand, when it says .net is up for sale, you have to realize that the controling of the .net domain entails quite a bit, namingly I would be concerned about infastructure. Verisign has been horrible to their direct customers, but so far, apart from the Site Finder crap they have done their job.

If they try to sabatoge the system, I'm fairly sure quite a few lawsuits would be filed. Notably the .org transisition went smoothly, I don't see any reason why .net won't go smoothly.

Moving to another company can be a pain, as all registrars will still have to go to the new company to sign up with their "program" for domains.

Prices (at least for registrars) will be controlled by the contract most likely, so changes in prices proboly will be minimal.

Personally I hope Verisign does not win the bid, as they have been a very poor small business partner.

All I can say is...

[derfy]

Good riddance...after that Site Finder crap, I don't trust Veri as far as I can walk without getting winded.

Re:lets hope not

[teh_mykel]

i choose to take that information with more than a grain of salt, if you understand what i mean.

I HATE VERISIGN

[drewzhrodague]

I hate their tactics, prices, schemes, and business practices. I am personally responsible for registering THOUSANDS of domains with them over the years, and I am treated like dirt by their service teams when I have trouble. Bastards rot in hell.

Re:I HATE VERISIGN

[miu]

Been quite some time since I had to deal with verisign, but they were an aggravating company in many ways. I'm not sure that the .biz or .info people are any better though, about the only time I see those tlds it is at a scam redirect site.

For some reason the entire registrar business has taken on a seedy air, the reek of small time evil :). Verisign did much to contribute to that, but they at least know what they are doing from a technical point of view - some new company will likely be just as bad as Verisign and disrupt things as well.

I'm not saying never change anything, but if you are going to change things do it very carefully and make sure it will be an actual improvement - theory and wishing don't make it so.

Letters of Support

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

Big Deal.... Take those letters and shove them. Using those letters, regardless of where they came from, would cause and/or swing the bias. If an independent group is making the decision, let them do independent research to decide.

People need to get off this "because Microsoft, IBM, AOL, etc. said it, so now I'll believe it" mentality and start thinking for themselves. For example, I like Linux. Not because Linus said so, but because I did my own research and found it to be what I feel I need.

Wait... I missed it...

[Kierthos]

When exactly did ICANN care about appearing impartial?

Why can't they just tell VeriSign something along the lines of "You fucked up. You thought you were all bad and shit. We're taking it away from you." and just let the other three companies mentioned bid for it and shut VeriSign out of the .net domain?

Kierthos

Speaking of ethics...

[nharmon]

[i]Help me, get a free [freeminimacs.com] mini mac.[/i]

Call me crazy, but you don't see a problem with talking about ethics, and advertising some ipod/minimac pyramid scheme at the same time?

I say that for now on, we pledge to never mod up people with this bullcrap in their sigs.

Sorry...

[sepluv]

Why exactly can't ICANN take into account the fact that Verisign broke their last contract (in a way that screwed around with the whole Internet and made Verisign lots of $$$) when deciding whether to give them the next contract? What do they decide the contract on then?

Re:lets hope not

[elemental23]

That's a terrible idea: a) Top-level domains have nothing to do with content, and b) the web != the internet. A top-level domain just for some specialized web content does nothing but display a clear misunderstanding of how DNS and naming works. That's the same kind of thinking that got us .mobi.