Fuck the WLS
 

http://www.defeatverisign.com/

I have been campaigning against this bullshit since 2002. Sign the petition, or go fuck yourself.

VeriSign's Wait-Listing Service (WLS) proposal which was approved in August 2002 by ICANN - the Internet regulatory body - would allow people interested in taking over a domain name to automatically assume control if the current owner does not renew their domain subscription when it expires.

This type of service is not new. Companies including SnapNames, NameWinner (from Dotster) and DomainAlert (GoDaddy) already offer services that monitor expiring domain names and try to grab them once they become available.

The VeriSign proposal essentially moves the process up a level, monitoring the names directly at the back-end registry instead of requiring the registrars to search VeriSign's back-end registry themselves.

When WLS launches, the current competitive market for grabbing expired domains will be replaced by a registry-level first-come first-served subscription service controlled by VeriSign.

At that time any expiring .com or .net domain name (.org names will not be included until later) that has a WLS order on it will no longer be 'fought over' by ICANN registrars and the various name grabbing services.

Instead, it will be automatically allocated to the WLS position holder for that name. In other words, the days of name-grabbing by registrars will be over for some names, replaced by a first-come first-served back ordering system. Names will only ever drop if they don't have a WLS order at VeriSign active.

VeriSign has licensed SnapNames' Parallel Registry technology that currently powers the SnapNames service for its Wait Listing Service.

Each WLS order placed is expected to cost the end-user customer between US$39 and $100 per name per year. (the wholesale price is US$24 per 12-month subscription which will go to VeriSign for running the service, with the rest going to the referring registrar through which the customer places the order.)

Snapnames expect this alliance with VeriSign to be worth $100 million to $150 million to them over a period of their five-year exclusive licensing agreement with VeriSign.

There are those who see this decision by ICANN to approve the WLS to be anti-competitive at best and there is no doubt that it does grant further special rights and privileges to VeriSign, in direct opposition to the intentions of the 1999 agreement to open up the market for domain registrations to free market competition. Under that agreement the days of VeriSign's 100% government sanctioned monopoly should be long over.

In addition the Verisign Registrar is the current registrar of record for the vast majority of names being deleted due to the 20 Million plus legacy domains inherited from their former 100% monopoly. Its decisions about batch deletions of expired domain names has been an ongoing issue.

This is bad for back drop companies ( besides snapnames of course) and people who like to spend insane amounts of money for domains at pool.

Domain investors will just have to figure new ways to acquire expiring domains. Either through extensive monitoring or buying them from the owners before they expire.

Extensive is right. The service is almost useless in and of itself.

If you want to get a good domain, you'll end up having to backorder it months or years in advance, making VeriSign a whole lot of cash. And there's no guarantee any domain will expire.

As long as they allow a WLS credit to be transfered to another domain it should be alright.

Its going to come down to who has the most money to invest right now for next year.

What I would like to know is will the snapname credits be converted to WLS credits? Or will they fuck a bunch of people and start from scratch

They said that if you have a snapnames backorder for a domain, it will be converted to a WLS backorder, if it is available. You can preorder at www.nextregistrationrights.com.

I have 12 SnapNames backorders right now, but I do NOT support WLS.