After extensive negotiations, the US government has agreed to a deal which will grant California-based company, Verisign, exclusive control over the lucrative .com domain. The deal was originally brokered between Verisign and the internet naming regulatory authority ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), before being handed over to the US Government for inspection in March 2006. Even though the internet is now a massive global affair, the US Government still retains all rights to approve any decisions pertaining to the most popular domains, such as the .com and .net domains.
However, strict caveats have been put into place: Verisign are under strict instructions as to how much they are allowed to raise their prices for .com domain name registration. Verisign is allowed to raise prices a maximum of four times over the next six years. Each of these price increases are limited to seven per cent and must be agreed upon by the NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration) as well as giving six months notice for each rise.
The .com domain is by far the most popular domain suffix there is, with over 59 million .com sites registered in search engine indexes across the world. Verisign owns the address book that contains information on the owner of each .com domain and runs the massive DNS server clusters that direct users to the right place. A press release from the Verisign website says that since they last won the contract in 1999, there has been 100 per cent uptime for users looking for .com domains; in addition, their servers can handle 10,000 times the DNS queries they could in 2000.
But not everyone is happy with the deal. Many companies whose primary business is domain registration have voiced their displeasure, stating that ICANN have a long history of security lapses and anti-trust issues, among other problems. Jon Nevett, Vice President of Policy for domain-name registration company Network Solutions, commented:
"Unfortunately, the Commerce Department has endorsed an agreement that creates a perpetual de facto monopoly, fails to provide sufficient checks and balances through competition and adequate oversight, and is fundamentally flawed from a national cyber-security perspective."
Steve DelBianco, executive director of the Netchoice Coalition (a collection of trade associations and e-commerce businesses), disagrees. He believes that the statements given out by dissenting parties are ultimately self-serving because the new agreement gives ICANN more resources to implement important security features.
However, whether the deal has been strictly regulated to ensure lax behaviour does not start to occur between the two monopolies is another matter - and one that is sure to be a hefty topic of debate for online forums over the coming months.
