The agreements contain significant changes to earlier proposals
issued in October.
The new arrangements no longer provide for a proposed
registry-level transaction fee of around 50 cents per registration,
for the purpose of funding ICANN, which VeriSign would have been
able to pass on directly to registrars.
Instead, ICANN intends to levy VeriSign with a much larger fixed
registry-level fee – $6 million for the first year of
operation, doubling to $12 million in 2009. VeriSign would
not be entitled to pass this on to registrars.
The new proposals permit VeriSign to increase the price of
domain name registrations, but put limits on the frequency of price
rises. Instead of being allowed to impose rises of up to 7% in each
of the next six years, in two of those years, VeriSign will only be
able to raise prices if it can show that the rises are
necessary for security reasons.
VeriSign will retain its presumptive right to renewal of the
.com registry under the new proposals, but must comply with
clarifications on the use that it may make of traffic data, new
service-level specifications for the .com registry, and revised
powers of approval granted to ICANN in respect of possible new
registry services.
These provisions reflect difficulties that sprang up between the
two organisations in September 2003, when VeriSign launched its
controversial Site Finder service.
This service redirected surfers to VeriSign's Site Finder search
engine when they entered a web address that was not registered on
the internet or was inactive. It was heavily criticised at the
time.
ICANN stepped in and, in the face of a threatened court action,
VeriSign agreed to suspend the service. VeriSign sued five months
later, alleging that ICANN had overstepped its contractual
authority and improperly attempted to regulate VeriSign's business
in violation of its charter and its agreements with VeriSign.
The case was later thrown out, but was subsequently re-filed in
a California court. In the meantime, ICANN countersued.
The new arrangements, which are open for public comment until
20th February, have yet to be approved by the
ICANN Board.
