Look who's getting their ass greased here.
 

FLAME OR PRAISE ALL YOU WANT JUST KEEP THIS TOPIC LIVE FOR A FEW DAYS :)

If you haven't heard Verisign and ICANN settled their suit. Idealy this would be a good thing but it's nothing but bad. ICANN has apparently allowed Verisign to serve itself up a silver platter full of goodies. To sum things up they get perpetual control over .com with the ability to add lots of money making services and increase your registration costs when others said they would do it for less and without all of those services. All in the name of reaching a settlement. A settlement that rewards Verisign in a case ICANN would have most likely won in the first place.


Here is the link to the settlement page
http://icann.org/announcements/announcement-24oct05.htm

Please let your voice be heard in this matter. I don't care whos side you're on but please take the time to do so.
Comments can be viewed here
http://forum.icann.org/lists/settlement-comments/

Comments can be made at [email protected]
You will need to verify your address before it will be posted.

Two antitrust lawsuits were filed by two domain related organizations on Monday

http://www.cfit.info

http://wadnd.com

Some articles to give you a better idea of whats really going on rather than the roses Verisign and ICANN would like to smell.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/051129/icann...uits.html?.v=3

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4482292.stm

Here is my small summary of flaws in the new contract. I will explain each of them for those who don't know anything about them.

1. WildcardDNS/SiteFinder scheme

This was what the original lawsuit was over. It hasn't been "ok'ed" in this contract but put up for futher talks. On can only assume it will be allowed after the contract is signed.

2. CLS/Expired domain monopoly

This is a new more profitable version of WLS which got shot down due to public outcry months ago. This is approced in the new contract. It allows Verisign to auction off ALL expired .com names in their service called Central Listing Service. They take 10% off of the top of the completed auction price and send the remaining to the registrar to do as they please. Idealy a large mojority of it goes to the previous owner but it's not required.

3. Perpetual presumptive renewal clause
The contract renews Verisigns contract until 2012 and they get first dibs on renewal from there to eternity. The only way they lose control is if the go belly up or breach their contract which is pretty much unbreachable.

4. $200M R&D commitment disappears
The current 2001 agreement requires that Verisign to spend $200M on infrastructure R&D by 2010, with a substantial portion by 2007. The new agreement does mention anything about this.

5. Traffic data sales
The agreement allows VRSN to collect traffic data and do whatever they want with it include selling it, so long as they don't disclose registrant or end-user information. (It's not clear whether a domain name itself is considered registrant information.) The traffic data shows inquiries about both existing and non-existent domains and is an extremely valuable source of information. Karl Auerbach has commented that they could monitor in real time the hits on names in URLs in television ads.

6. Appendix Y

Appendix Y of the current agreement is the Sanctions Program which gives ICANN a way to discipline or fine VRSN for minor misbehavior, short of a lawsuit or external arbitration. The sanctions can be significant, $10K per violation. The new agreement doesn't have them.


7. ICANN fee increases
ICANN doubles their already $.25 a domain fee to $.50 a domain. ICANN's budget is available for public inspection to even know if it's needed.

8. 7% a year domain price increases

Verisign is allowed to increase .com prices 7% a year starting 2007 from here to eternity and not have to show any reasoning for doing os.

9. Accreditation fee doubles

The fee which registrars pay to become an accredited registrar doubles. This will most likely make those registries offering cheap registrations and operating on slim profit margins or losing money altogether to gain business from other services either go out of business, raise prices even more than what they have to due to the Verisign increases. It may even detur others from becoming accredited. This in turn will will reduce the registrars offering registrations and most likely will increase pricing due to less competition.


FLAME OR PRAISE ALL YOU WANT JUST KEEP THIS TOPIC LIVE FOR A FEW DAYS :)

IMHO this is shocking news, maybe not a surprise but fucked up non the less!!

The .com monopoly on dropped domains is going to put *a lot* of people out'a business and all these new fee's, across the board, is going artificially inflate an already ridiculous domain resale market.

I'm a self confessed newbie to the whole domain economy but there are some high power guys here I'd love to hear from, Evan from XPays being on of course with his great new product IPalert / PDDW.

ICANN is a fucked up organization.

A mistake I made in the facts

#4. The new agreement DOESN'T mention anything about this.

ICANN sucks green donkey dicks.

bump for an important issue!!

Some important news... bump to keep it alive

Nothing unexpected. Of course they're going to try and bump up their profits without having to do any work or justify it. Bunch of fucking crooks is what they are.

bump for the cause.

Who will be the first to blame BUSH????

<--- Wearing tin foil hat!

Glad you all can see the real truth behind it. Take a few minutes to let ICANN know your feelings on the comments board at ICANN they will be closing it down in a few days and Verisign has people spamming it with "don't let the UN take over the internet" propaganda.

verisign's board of directors all deserve raises lol - this is reminiscent of a big oil company pattern about to happen.

from where i sit the 2 biggest issues are: 1) the domain expirations and the lack of equality for all registrars to re-register a domain for its own customer. 2) the doubling of the fees to become an accredited registrar.

nonetheless, i still believe the little guy can flourish and compete. also, even doubling the fees to become an accredited registrar won't impede a driven business person from achieving the aforementioned goal. as more people get hip to the other 100's of registrars hopefully less domain expirations will happen on verisign's watch- other than that they have a nice cash cow over there for themselves.

great to hear various opinions regarding this issue