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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.
...they can only afford to provide single letter domains now?
Obviously we should give control of the internet over to the UN. They would never abuse or monopolize it.
.... 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.
Domain registrations should cost $100 a year, just to help stop idiots from buying every domain name for $8.95 and reselling them for more than they are worth.
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
the court in which country will handle this? I don't see this, since it is international problem here. Is there any interantional court? Geneva? US? UN? Japan? we are talking about whole earth...
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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I'm fairly sure that the sub-registrars you go through (godaddy.com, regsiter.com, etc.) are just middle men.
I was quoted out of context in my autobiography...
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
If WADND thinks they will win this suit, I have a hotel on the Boardwalk to sell them.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
We can only wish they both lose...
If anything the prices of new domains should go down. After all isn't the technology getting cheaper. Maybe they are adding a nightmare of a bureaucracy they need to pay, or maybe they want higher salaries. Either way if my broadband prices and computer equipment are falling so should theirs.
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"
I'd like to see domain names to be much cheaper, so that neophytes can get a domain name for $1US/year.
What pays for the DNS system anyway, and why aren't domain names sold directly to the public instead of through registr[ars][ants?]?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
You never know, they may just land on Free Parking.
I was going to say that Verisign has quashed any competition with respect to the provision of SSL certificates, but it appears that there are alternatives available (some of them much more competitively priced, in fact- https://www.registerfly.com/ssl/ for example. However, I did notice that they use something called a ChoicePoint Unique Identifier. Due to the security issues with ChoicePoint, I find it rather ironic that they are issuing identifiers (purpose unknown) for something related to security.
I can't see any UN involement here, so I guess we can safely be against ICANN?
They can do that? Take all the .com names I mean.
I really hope it leads somewhere, cause they also have ssl certificat (almost) monopole. I write almost, cause eventhough they're other compagnies. The price difference isn't that much. Our client demand the certificat so we have no other choices than get one...
:)
Will that make the price drop? I think not. Will they pass the bill(fees) to the customers? hum I think yep
I hate it when an action produce an equal negative opposite reaction
But at the end we, the little e-commerce business provider will have to pay. But hey that's ok, cause we gonna make so huge profit soon from our e-online businesses.
The web is getting pretty ugly. Who is really gonna do something about it? A court? UN? you guys the geeks? Skynet?
It's funny how I make sense to others and not myself...
Just like my property taxes and unlike my last few raises :( What did everyone expect though. We have a war to pay for damnit!!!
gasmonso http://religiousfreaks.com/http://wadnd.com/
Appears to be part of...
Targetedtraffic.com, who appear to be working with folks at the reputable-sounding domain names americanflags.com, revenue.net, golfcourses.com, ireit.com, erealestate.com, and it looks like they all hail from Delray Beach, Floriduh.
Congratulations, guys! I don't know whether you're spammers or not, but it takes talent to sound like a filthier bunch of domain-hijacking cockgobblers than the entire marketing department of Verisign. I mean, seriously -- I read those domains and was surprised when I didn't see any of you on the ROKSO list of the top 100 spammers. I actually looked. About the only way you could have looked like a bigger bunch of dirtballs would have been to have been based in Boca Raton, FL, or Slidell, LA.
I hate to say this guys, but even though you're not on the ROKSO list - after seeing who you're working with, I kinda hope Verisign/ICANN wins.
at least to have an informeed comment :)
http://icann.org/announcements/announcement-21nov0 5.htm/
But it doesn't mean they automatically get $500, that is an urban legend.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
an actual interesting idea!
When the article quotes the filing as saying: "thereby precludes competitors from ever entering the .com and .net domain name registration market" That seems a bit misleading, since the icann/verisign agreement is about maintaining the central "whois" database not excluding others from offering registration services.
You will still be able to register domain names through GoDaddy, Dotster or someone else.
The biggest concern here for the rest of us, who want to keep it inexpensive to register domain names, is what will be the cost that is passed along to people and companies registering domain names if the cost of versign's database management service will be rising at a rate "greater than inflation"
Was this contract put out to bid? It seems that just managing a database, running backups and maintaining the software that allows registrars to remotely access it and register new domain names shouldn't be an expense that rises much beyond the rate of inflation.
Theoretically, though, verisign could undercut the registrar competition with a deal like this. Though given its history of milking its customer base for all its worth with fees that are more than double the competition, that seems unlikely.
I'm fairly sure that the sub-registrars you go through (godaddy.com, regsiter.com, etc.) are just middle men.
godaddy.com is not a sub-registrar, it is a registrar. One of many in fact.
I beleive in 1999, NSI had to allow external registrars to register domain names and compete on price.
A monopoly over .com and .net domains? Damn it, guess I need to inform my website they don't control my domains, VeriSign still does!
I guess my webhost must also be paying the added $20/year to VeriSign for my domain registration. Oh, make that $30 for one of my domains since my host registers it for me for free.
and we always used the: "paying the fines and taxes on the Community Chest and Chance cards, and income taxes into the kitty rather than to the bank" method of building the free parking kitty.
CFIT appears to be much less of "fuckweasels" to me.
SPF support for most open source mail servers can be found at libspf2.
Yep, but Verisign runs the root DNS servers for .com and .net.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
If it took them 4 rewrites of their complaint, and they still sound like a bunch of whiny brats...this trial could take awhile.
Hi everyone,
I am writing this letter to all of you personally because it is time for all of you to stand up for a cause. Some of you might be aware that ICANN and Verisign recently announced a proposed settlement of their pending litigation (Verisign had sued ICANN a few years ago and that lawsuit is pending). We believe this settlement is unfair, unjust, inappropriate and would be blasphemous to the Internet community and to your Business.
Some Highlights of the settlement
The entire settlement documents are posted online at http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/verisign/sett lement-agreements.htm
The part with regards to pricing is in Section 7.3 of http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/verisign/com- registry-agreement-22sep05.pdf
What can you do?
This settlement agreement will be signed very soon unless the ICANN Board is convinced otherwise. You all represent the voice of the various Domain Name Consumers worldwide. All of you should send your comments about this settlement and how it will affect your business.
Send your comments to settlement-comments@icann.org
Keep the following points in mind before sending your comments:
Feel free also to forward this email to your Customers and Resellers and urge them to indivi
What are the qualifications for being a "Domain Name Developer"?
I want to put that on my resume too.
I read
As a long time agitator for the loosening of the ICANN/Verisign stronghold over domain registrations and other internet related items, I have to admit to being surprised to find that they're facing an even bigger bunch of l4m3r& in court. Who would have thought it? I *gasp* think I might want to see ICANN win this one.
2 cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
The row concerns the decision by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) to allow the private firm Verisign to maintain control of .com forever.
Not to utterly nitpick here, but you'd think a highly reputable institution like the BBC would have journalists that comprehend that acronyms are capitalized. When one makes errors, such as improper spelling in a blog or in casual writing it doesn't bother me so much--but for some reason it really irks me to see BBC use "Icann" in a news article.
This aside, this is really an awful, uninformative news piece. For instance, it doesn't say anything about who the "World Association of Domain Name Developers" are nor who they represent.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
"Registrar" is the term you're looking for here, not "sub-registrar". GoDaddy, Dotster, Register.com, Network Solutions, Joker.com, etc. are registrars. Verisign operates the Registry for all .com and .net domains, and charges registrars about $6/yr per domain if I remember correctly.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Verisign _is_ network solutions.
No longer true. Verisign did purchase Network Solutions, and sort of mangled everything in an anti-competitive way, but then got then got their act together and sold off Network Solutions to somebody else. Currently, Network Solutions is just another registrar.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
As an employee of one small .com Registrar I would rather support WADND in this case. ICANN and
Verisign are a bunch of greedy lazy bastards. ICANN earns 25 cents per year per every .com/.net domain name (so called ICANN tax - basically for nothing, they only perform Registrar accreditations),
and Verisign takes 6 bucks for maintaining .com/.net Registry. But there other ICANN taxes, which
are not so widely visible to general public. ICANN charges all .com/.net Registrars $20k a year just
for the right to register .com/.net domains (plus 25 cents tax for each domain), last year that
annual ICANN tax was 5 times lower (around $4k). So basically small guys on the domain market are
now in much more difficult conditions, because profit margins have significantly decreased in
last few years, some Registrars have a profit margin of 25 cents per domain name. That is you have
to register or renew at least 80,000 domains a year just to pay all ICANN taxes, that is not counting
labour costs etc. Basically as a result of ICANN actions domain registration business has been closed for small guys, it is now not possible to enter this business without shitloads of money. It was deliberate
action of ICANN, they even planned in their annual budget a descrease of Registrar number from
500 to around 200.
Try Simple-SSL. It's exactly the same certificate offered by RapidSSL, but significantly cheaper.
Works in most browsers (test it if you're not sure!), and it's single-root, not chained-root (chained-root is a bit more cumbersome to set up).
(No, I have no affiliation, I'm not even a customer - I have a client who bought a RapidSSL cert, so I know it works fine; I didn't find Simple-SSL until after I'd already bought mine from somebody else.)
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I'm sorry, but they really do sound like whiney little shits filing this against ICANN and Verisign. If ICANN and Verisign had a monopoly over ALL domain names in creation, I could see how people would get upset. But they created the .com and .net just for themselves to sell, okay? If you don't want to pay an increase in subscription, just change to a different .whatever; it's not really all that difficult. Does anyone else see this as flamingly stupid?
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
From the CNN archives... http://archives.cnn.com/2001/TECH/internet/03/01/v erisign.icann.idg/
You take the actions of corrupt individuals, squint your eyes and say "yup! the U.N.'s a for-profit entity!" Using that logic, the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress is for-profit entities, going by the guilty pleas and indictments over the last few weeks. Sheesh.
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
From the Complaint: An example of an IP number might be: 12.34.567.89.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Monopoly abuse is when you try to force the whole board into your brother. That's all that has happened here.
ICANN and Verisign should be forced to give up their monopoly control of the Internet! Verisign's customer service has always been horrible precisely because they have no real competition.