Nineteen Registrars Decry ICANN Arrangement

hpcanswers writes "ICANN, the governing body for Internet domain names, recently gave VeriSign exclusive control of the top-level .com domain until 2012. Now, nineteen registrars, including GoDaddy and Network Solutions, have petitioned ICANN to reconsider on the basis that VeriSign will most likely increase registration fees. A few of the registrars have also asked the US Department of Commerce to veto the deal." From the article: "The new deal permits VeriSign to increase the price of domain name registrations by 7 per cent in four of the next six years. In the two remaining years, VeriSign will only be able to raise prices if it can show the rises are necessary for security reasons. It also gives VeriSign a presumptive right to renewal of the .com registry, on the proviso that it complies with certain aspects of the agreement."

Comments

GoDaddy Blog

[op12]

The President and Founder of GoDaddy blogged about this a few days ago.

"The fact that this deal was approved is a loud signal that major changes are needed at ICANN. If we don't take this opportunity and step up and replace the incredibly inept leadership at ICANN, it will go a long way in providing the United Nations with the ammunition it needs to begin taking control of the Internet."

Re:hmm

[oahazmatt]

For those of you playing at home, the "GoDaddy Girl" is Candace Michelle.

We now return to your regularly-scheduled /.

Well, you see, it's like this...

[Mille Mots]

...a dollar tomorrow isn't worth a dollar today. It's inflation that's the problem. Here, let's do a little exercise. We'll assume a 6% rate, and a domain fee of $7.95 four years down the road.

Now, the present value of future money is given as FV=PV((1+i)**n). In our case:

• FV=$7.95
• PV= what we're solving for
• 1=1
• i=.06
• n=4

Now, let's do the math:

$7.95=PV((1+.06)**4)
$7.95=PV(1.26247696)
PV=$7.95/1.26247696
PV=$6.29714462274226

So, you can see that Verisign is going to lose $1.65 ($7.95-6.29) on every domain registration for the next four years. Figure a million registrations per year times four years and all of a sudden you're talking real money. The kind of money losses the shareholders won't stand for! Figure the shareholders want a 10% return and it starts getting real ugly.

--
Sig monde

A note to the sarcasm impaired: I just made all of that up (well, not the TVM or math), and yes, I know it defies logic. That's the problem with precision sarcasm; you're always having to explain yourself. ;) Although, I wouldn't be surprised to find out some MBA actually believes something similar to to this line of reasoning.

Quoi?

[C10H14N2]

http://www.icann.org/topics/vrsn-settlement/board- statements-section1.html

"First, while some opposed the new registry agreement because of the terms of the "renewal" clause, in truth, the renewal clause in the new agreement is little changed from the 2001 .COM agreement. In 2001, ICANN agreed to give VeriSign a presumptive right of renewal for .COM in return for VeriSign's agreement to give up the right to operate .ORG and to agree to a competitive bidding process for the renewal of .NET. ICANN made that decision because it believed that it was very unlikely and not necessarily desirable that the .COM registry operator would change, absent very extreme circumstances, and thus conceding that point (in return for concessions by VeriSign that were viewed as having real value) was conceding very little as a practical matter. The new agreement, again as a practical matter, merely clarifies this point, and does not, in our judgment, make any substantive change. Thus, this is not a reason to oppose this new agreement."

Greed?

Re:Quoi?

[morganew]

There seems to be lots of confusion in the comments about what role VeriSign has, and its competition with the registrars:

1. VeriSign is the Registry, not a Registrar. VeriSign is the authoritative registry for .com and .net domain names.(VeriSign runs the TLD servers) [Verisign registry role]

2. Registrars (goDaddy, Register.com) take your money and then give the info to VeriSign. They pay about $5 to VeriSign to run the registry.

3. Verisign used to own NSI/Network Solutions, but they no longer do, so they don't have a retail presence. They have a retail presence for security certs, and payment services. You, as an individual, do NOT register a name with VeriSign.

So to repeat VeriSign = Registry GoDaddy = Registrar

Apparently they were sold

[NigelJohnstone]

I checked the site, they have apparently been sold to Pivotal Equity Group from Verisign.

If Verisign gets pre-emptive renewal of .com domains and sets up a centralized whois as per the agreement, then Verisign could monitor Whois to see which expiring domains to grab, and it can preempt even Network Solutions to grab those domains, so I NetSol has as much to lose as any other registrar.

Re:Doesn't Verisign own Network Solutions?

[Bryansix]

Not anymore.