Verisign holds onto .com after a settlement in a long-running dispute with ICANN.

Verisign keep the .com authority after a settlement in a long-running dispute with Icann. Under the terms of the deal, Verisign has dropped an anti-trust lawsuit against the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann).

As part of the settlement, Verisign is being allowed to keep control over the lucrative .com domain until 2012.

This all started this way:

Verisign started The Site Finder service which meant if web users were looking for a .com or .net domain that was non-existent because of typing mistakes, or it was not registered, they were sent to Verisign's website instead of just getting an "error" page.

The net policy body, Icann, was worried the website could have affected the stability of the net. Rivals claimed Verisign was taking advantage of its position as an administrator of .com domain names.

Under pressure from Icann, Verisign suspended the service in October 2003. The company later sued Icann, claiming it had no authority to stop it from offering its site finder service.

In response, Icann countersued.

After all these days of dispute now under the terms of the agreement, Verisign has had its contract to maintain the database of 35 million .com domain names extended from 2007 to 2012.

Verisign makes $6 a year from each of the 35 million .com domain names in use. It also controls the .net domain, which contains nearly six million names.

I hate Verisign for their unprofessional past.
What do you think about this?

 

I dont have a problem with it. Id actually prefer if Verisign kept control indefinitely. For a company with a monopoly on .com's, $6 is a giveaway price... theyve run things pretty smoothly, too. ICANN taking it over is just one more layer of bureaucracy.

 

Not to mention that one company controlling everything is not a good idea. To much power in the hands of one company will create a long term problem for pricing.

 

Yes, we have seen this in the past, when Verisign tried to divert the free traffic to its own pages. and that is how this all started.

Also the prices are an important factor. Verisign may change the pricing of the domain names mostly at its own will.

 

If Verisign wants to divert error traffic to its own pages, so what? It's error traffic, its not like theyre stealing someone elses traffic. If microsoft.com is worried about losing the business of the dozen retards who keep spelling it microsopht.com, then they should spend the $6 to register the name.

And wrt price changes, Verisign may be able to change the price at will, but they havent. Well, rather, they have... but it was to lower prices. Why risk handing control over to ICANN? If it ain't broke, dont fix it.

 

You should add a poll to this thread... I'm sure the vote would be overwhelmingly against vericrap.

 

Actually what they did was really unprofessional. They redirected every net user to their own pages who tried to reach on a non existing URL. For example if at that time you've entered Gates-Hates-microsoft.com you'll end up automatically at their site.
This is more Weird than IE's feature that gets people on msn search pages if they enter wrong url.(Atleast IE users can disable this feature.)

 

uhm ya... Didn't ebay just buy Verisign?

 

Well, thanks for the update.

I also hate verisign. I was wondering how Verisign got the control over .com domain names.