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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.
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.
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
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.
I can't see any UN involement here, so I guess we can safely be against ICANN?
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.
CFIT appears to be much less of "fuckweasels" to me.
SPF support for most open source mail servers can be found at libspf2.
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
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.
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.
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)