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ICANN/Verisign Sued For Monopoly Abuse
Andy_R writes "The BBC is reporting that the World Association of Domain Name Developers (WADND) have filed suit against ICANN and Verisign for alleged violations of antitrust, conspiracy, monopolization and price fixing laws. The suit alleges that the two are entering an unlawful agreement that gives VeriSign a permanent monopoly over the all .com and .net domain name registrations, and the right to raise prices at 7% per annum forever. The text of the lawsuit is available as a .pdf from WADND." ZDNet has the story as well.
.... The only people who will win are they lawyers. Makes me wish I went into law rather than computer science.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
The way I see it, there should only be one entity in charge of assigning of names for the internet. With millions of people on the internet, having multiple organizations in charge of domains and such would make the internet so much less efficient.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
That's not very good though, I don't have a job right now, but I own two domain names (I won't plug them here though..). Thankfully, they only cost me something like $9 for a year and with a friend hosting my sites for me, I can enjoy the benefit of being a penniless bum with a domain name.
7% forever is just crazy, short term it's not a big problem, but over a long enough period it's like a licence to print money (which explains why that's what they wanted). It would be a different story if they linked it to inflation or some other index.
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
How can it possibly cost more every year to register a domain name? Everything involved except labour continually becomes cheaper - bandwidth, processing power, storage, everything! The process is basically automated anyway, so how can a steady increase in the cost of registering a domain be justified?
The price is already too high, in my opinion - companies like verisign (and other domain name registers) are making money by charging for something that is essentially free to create. For-profit companies should be kept out of domain registration - isn't that part of the point of ICANN in the first place?
So, having lost the battle over who "owns" the Internet (or at least the DNS system), it seems as though the next step is to challenge the "owner" as a monopoly.
Hmm. Being a monopoly is not a crime. It only becomes so when abuse of monopoly power can be demonstrated. This does not look like it (yet), as there is a big difference between what you are contractually allowed to do, and what you actually end up doing.
"She's furniture with a pulse"
They probably wouldn't. I know saying anything in a sarcastic matter-of-factly tone makes you sound witty, but there's not much merit or logical basis for assuming that the U.N. would make the same kind of abuses. The U.N. is not a for-profit organization, and U.N. commitee members cannot profit from such unethical practices. They don't have shareholders whom they are obligated to turn a profit for. As such, it makes them much more suitable for running a global communication infrastructure that's just as important to our global society as other shared public infrastructures such as roads and sewage systems. So if anything, these abuses by ICANN should make us reconsider the legitimacy of their monopolistic control.
What about the oil-for-food scandal that has recently rocked the UN? Sounds to me that even though the rules don't allow such profits to be made, they are made nonetheless.
No, that would only stop poor idiots. You've still got rich idiots to contend with.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
You have *no* clue what you are talking about. This lawsuit has *nothing* to do with the US or UN or any other country. It had to do with how Verisign has a monopoly that is netting it over $100,000,000 in profit (far more, but the 9 digit threshold is quite attention-grabbing).
Patriotism doesn't mean bringing in national pride every chance you get.
A much better solution would be to make them non-transferable.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Low cost is good, but if the domain is NOT used for a legitimate use (uses other than to hold onto it for the purpose of reselling for a profit) within a short window, rights to the domain can be contested and the name re-sold. If then re-purchased by the original owner, the price is 10 times the previous yearly price (and then 10 times that price for the re-purchaser if it still isn't put to proper use, etc.). No more cyber-squatting would be done, because it would be too expensive. A cybersquatter would have to have a legitimate use for the domain soon, or go broke trying to keep hold of the domain.