ICANN is bowing to pressure over its decision to give registrar
VeriSign control of the lucrative .com domain name registry until
2007. A short period of consultation has been announced. It also
has concerns over multilingual domain names.
The ICANN board this week agreed to defer its decision to award
.com control to VeriSign until 2nd April this year following
complaints by other registries that the decision meant unfair
competition because the company acts as both registry (i.e. it's in
control of the .com database, meaning all domain name re-sellers
pay it a commission on each .com sale) and as registrar (directly
selling domain names, in competition with re-sellers). ICANN is
consequently inviting public comment until 31st March.
John Robert, director of registrar Marsgerm Technologies, argues
on ICANN’s on-line message board:
“Fairness can only achieved by the
separation of the registry and the registrar. Without the
separation, Verisign can use the $6.00 domain fee from other
registrars to support its competition with the other registrars. Or
without paying a fee, hoarding expired domain names so that other
registrars can not register them for their clients.
“We do not think ICANN has offered
sufficient evidence or even explanation to support its argument
that the separation is not necessary. As a domain reseller with
ample experience dealing with registrants, we strongly believe that
the fairness of competition among the registrars has not been
achieved. VeriSign must separate its dual function in order to
maximally secure a real fair competition.
“On the other hand, we do not see any
potential damage to the Internet community could be caused by this
separation. The big loss for Verisign, though, is that it can no
longer use the domain fee to support its competition with its
rivals.”
Comments can be made at ICANN’s web site, www.icann.org, or by e-mail to ICANN's
Vice President, Louis Touton, touton@icann.org.
Multilingual domain names
ICANN is also facing pressure over its recent decision to
introduce multilingual domain names because there is no technical
standard to ensure compatibility over many differing systems
connecting internet users.
Incompatibility could prevent users accessing the web site they
want or they could have problems sending and receiving e-mails to
and from certain users. The new names are presently being issued on
an experimental basis.
ICANN has ordered a working group to report to it by June with
recommendations on technical compatibility and any issues of user
privacy and intellectual property rights.
