02 March 2006

Deal on the Future of the .COM domain Approved By ICANN

The body that oversees the Names and Numbers over the Internet has approved the controversial deal with a US Firm Verisign about the .COM domain

It all started with the New Service by Verisign called "Site Finder"

When a net user went to a .com domain that was non-existent or expired, Site Finder redirected them to the Verisign and giving them a chance to buy the domain rather that letting him see the error page.

Verisign stopped the service on ICANN's request. But fined a lawsuit against the ICANN.

ICANN counterattacked Verisign.

Now they are on the way of settlement.

In the meeting held on 28th Feb, 2006, Nine people voted confirming the deal against 5 non-confirmative votes and 1 abstained vote.

Currently the deal is in hands of US Department of Commerce (USDOC) for final approval. ICANN people say only .COM domain needs such approval from USDOC.

Now Verisign will have the control over .COM domains and also it can increase the prices of .COM domains Four times in next Six Years. This means it will have the monopoly over the .COM damain till 2012.

Proposed Verisign Settlement
http://www.icann.org/topics/verisign-settlement.htm

ICANN Announcement regarding this
http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-28feb06.htm

About ICANN

ICANN is an internationally organised, non-profit corporation that has responsibility for Internet Protocol (IP) address space allocation, protocol identifier assignment, generic (gTLD) and country code (ccTLD) Top-Level Domain name system management, and root server system management functions. As a private-public partnership, ICANN is dedicated to preserving the operational stability of the Internet; to promoting competition; to achieving broad representation of global Internet communities; and to developing policy appropriate to its mission through bottom-up, consensus-based processes.

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