 |
ICANN approves VeriSign to handle the .com… forever
It appears the ICANN has finally approved a -very- controversial .com contract that will see VeriSign handed control of the internet’s most famous product… forever!
The contract still has to be approved by the US government, which should be a formality, although at least one congressman has written to the head of the Department of Commerce recommending the deal be shot down.
Perhaps he’s the only one who sees this is a genuinely bad idea.
The controversy reigns over several elements in the new contract. For one, it provides VeriSign with a “presumptive right of renewal” over the dotcom registry – effectively handing one company complete control of all dotcom domains forever, reports The Register.
Here’s a copy of the official press release:
ICANN Board Approves VeriSign Settlement Agreements
Marina del Rey, California, 28 February 2006: Today, ICANN’s Board of Directors approved, by a majority vote, a set of agreements settling a long time dispute between ICANN and VeriSign, the registry operator for the .COM registry.
These settlement documents include a new registry agreement relating to the operation of the .COM registry. The new .COM registry agreement will now proceed to the U.S. Department of Commerce for final approval, and the entire settlement is dependent upon this approval before it is finalized.
USDOC approval is required due to the unique history of the .COM generic top-level domain and it is the only gTLD which requires such approval. If approved, this settlement will clear the way for a new and productive relationship between ICANN and VeriSign facilitating ICANN’s stewardship and technical coordination of the Internet’s domain name system.
ICANN’s Board voted 9 to 5 in favor of the settlement agreements with one director abstaining. Affirmative votes were cast by the following Board Members: Vint Cerf (Chairman), Alejandro Pisanty (Vice-Chairman), Mouhamet Diop, Demi Getschko, Hagen Hultzsch, Veni Markovski, Vanda Scartezini, Paul Twomey (President and CEO), and Hualin Qian. Directors who voted against the approval of the settlement documents were: Raimundo Beca, Susan Crawford, Joichi Ito, Njeri Rionge, and Peter Dengate Thrush. Director Michael Palage abstained.
Statements by Board members on their votes will be posted on the ICANN website within the next two days.
In other business during today’s meeting, the ICANN Board approved seven separate recommendations by ICANN’s ccNSO (Country-Code Name Supporting Organization) regarding improvements and clarifications to the ICANN Bylaws. One recommendation was put over for additional discussion with the ccNSO at ICANN’s upcoming meeting in Wellington, New Zealand scheduled for the last week of March.
These policy recommendations were presented to the ICANN Board from the first policy development process (ccPDP) conducted by the ccNSO. This successful policy development process generated from the ccTLD community was a significant milestone for ICANN’s technical coordination of the Internet’s domain name system.
All in all, it’s bad news for all .com owners since the administration will probably be passed over to an overly mercantile, privately owned group… this is all against the spirit of the internet.
What were the people at ICANN thinking when they approved this?
 |
