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

Security Reasons.

[mumblestheclown]

In the two remaining years, VeriSign will only be able to raise prices if it can show the rises are necessary for security reasons.

Come again?

Re:Security Reasons.

[MightyMartian]

I'd like to know why, after its nasty stunts, Verisign isn't outright forbidden to have anything to do with .com.

Re:Security Reasons.

[MBCook]

You know... security reasons. Like:

• We can't be sure that your domain won't be hijacked unless you pay our security fee
• or We find our records tend to be sold to spammers, but we could fix it with some more security money
• or We can't be positive that we won't send people to beat you up unless you pay the security deposit

This is great. Am I the only one who thinks that ICANN needs a serious blow to the side of the head to get things back in order? I remember paying $100 for a .com a few years ago when there was no choice of registrars. Now they are like $7. Here comes "inflation."

exclusive

[Tachikoma]

what was the last good thing that came out of exclusive control of something?

Re:exclusive

[Unordained]

You know, now that you mention it ... why -do- we give exclusive control of TLD's to anyone? It's a technology problem: namespace registrations need to be unique, we need to prevent two people from buying the same item at the same time. Isn't there a technological solution? We've been doing two-phase-commit for a long time, and that's all this really is -- updating several databases at once, making sure the new domain name is unique in each one. It'd require cooperation between registrars, as they'd all have to be checking/hitting each others' databases ... but it's not impossible. It would open the whole process up to new competitors on an ad-hoc basis, even, which could be expected to drive down prices.

Re:exclusive

[feijai]

what was the last good thing that came out of exclusive control of something?

Er, rural electrification?

Long-distance telephone calls?

Community sewage?

Mail?

Sometimes monopolies occur because it's not economically feasible or not a social good to have competition if that competition results in a race to the bottom. At least at the outset.

Your quote sounds very much like someone who's taken neither a civics nor microeconomics course. No wonder /. modded you insightful! :-)

Where's the increased cost?

[onetwentyone]

They are selling an intangible product. There are no production, R&D, or distribution costs. I can see marketing and bandwidth charges but raising the purchase price by seven percent every four years just doesn't really add up.

Are you for real?

[C10H14N2]

There are 21 people on the board of directors.

This cult of personality crap with ICANN is just exhausting. Say something like "Vint Cerf Sell Out!" and heads nod everywhre, but if you were to say the same thing about, say Amadeu Abril i Abril, Nii Quaynor or Masanobu Katoh they wouldn't have a clue what you were talking about, but would happily drone on about how it's all a conspiracy of U.S. control blah blah blah blah blah.

Re:GoDaddy Blog

[ivan256]

As I read the comments in this thread, it really is starting to piss me off that people are letting their anti-American attitudes get in the way of talking about what's really going on.

Neither Verisign, ICANN,nor the UN are elected bodies, and none of them exist for the wellbeing of individuals or businesses. Verisign exists to make a profit, ICANN seems to exist to make sure they continue to exist, and the UN operates on the positions of governments (both the elected and/or corrupt types equally). Also, they each make the tasks they perform way more expensive than they have to be (this goes doubly so for the UN).

Are you sure it isn't that the primary reason you want the UN to take over is because you dislike the US government so much? If you ask me, the primary reason to oppose a UN takeover of DNS is that the UN answers to governments instead of people. Maybe you European types like that sort of thing. You did, after all, basically eliminate any individual level involvement in your new government when you set up the EU. I, however, would like a body that is actually accountable to ordinary people to be in charge... even if, for now, that means a subset of ordinary people.

Let's find some organization to run things that is actually democratic, and world representative, instead of handing it over to the UN just because people don't trust the US. Or better yet, let's trade a tiny bit of the reliablilty of the DNS system for distributed, de-regulated management.

(Yeah, I know, I'm going to get modded as Flamebait. Let me tell those moderators in advance that they're biased and wrong.)