In an open letter to Vint Cerf, chairman of ICANN, eight top registrars, including Network Solutions, GoDaddy, Register.com and Melbourne IT, urged the organisation to make critical changes to the agreements, which have already been revised as a result of public comment.
"Unfortunately, the changes do not go to the heart of the matter," says the letter to ICANN's Board. "The agreement still harms the internet community by allowing unjustified price increases in most future years at a time when fees for .com should be decreasing, not rising."
The revised settlement and registry agreements, published by ICANN in January, allow VeriSign to increase the price of domain name registrations by up to 7% in four of the next six years.
VeriSign has also been given a presumptive right to renewal of the .com registry, on the proviso that it complies 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.
According to the open letter, if these provisions are allowed to stand, then competition in the .com registry will be affected.
VeriSign should be forced to justify any price increases, or have them reviewed, while the renewal of the .com registry should be by means of a competitive rebid of the contract, say the registrars.
They are particularly concerned that VeriSign which, as the .com domain registry controls 85% of the US market, will be locked in as registry operator “without the counterbalance of a competitive bid process”.
“The guarantee of an unregulated monopoly runs counter to the reasons behind why ICANN was created the policies of the anti-trust laws of the United States, and the competition policies of many nations worldwide,” says the letter.
The new arrangements, which are open for public comment until 20th February, have yet to be approved by the ICANN Board.
