U.S. GOV. SIGNS .COM DOMAIN FUTURE DEAL

[Anonymous]

Deal signed on .com domain future
The
US government has given its blessing to a controversial deal over the
future of the lucrative .com net domain.The deal gives .com
administrator Verisign control over the domain until 2012.The US
Department of Commerce retains some oversight of Verisign and has final
approval of any price rises to renew .com net addresses.Critics said
the deal gave Verisign a monopoly hold on the iconic domain.

Controversial contract
The
original deal over the .com domain was negotiated by Verisign and the
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) which
oversees the net’s address infrastructure.Details of that deal were
handed over to the US Department of Commerce in March 2006. Although
the internet is increasingly an international phenomenon, the US
retains the right to rubber-stamp Icann decisions on how the
infrastructure operates.The National Telecommunications and Information
Administration, an agency of the US Department of Commerce, has spent
the last nine months scrutinising the proposed agreement and reviewing
comments made on it by net bodies and companies.Verisign has run the
.com domain since 1999 and has now won the right to keep on controlling
it until 2012. The deal also gives it the right to raise prices to
renew .com domains in four of the six years of the contract.Price rises
are limited to 7% in any year and six months notice must be given of
any proposed increase.However, the NTIA has kept final approval of any
price rises and of subsequent renewal of the .com contract. The NTIA
said the contract would only be renewed at the end of its term if “the
approval will serve the public interest”.When Icann unveiled the deal
it was criticised for giving Verisign control over .com for so long.The
.com domain is by far the most popular of the net’s addresses and
currently there are 59 million domains registered which use the suffix.
Verisign maintains the address books of who owns which .com domain and
runs the computers that direct web users’ computers to the right
place.The deal also signals the end of legal action taken by Verisign
against Icann and the dropping of a retaliatory suit by the net
overseer. 

[Author]

December 7, 2006 at 1:21 PM