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ICANN moves against VeriSign retired domain land grab
25/07/2002
The Internet Corp for Assigned Names and Numbers may block a controversial proposed service from VeriSign Inc that would allow the company and its partners to offer customers chances to register expiring domain names, Kevin Murphy writes But VeriSign and its allies say that ICANN would be overextending its mandate if it does try to block the service.
ICANN's influential Names Council yesterday voted 6-1 to advise ICANN's board of directors to reject VeriSign's proposal to implement a potentially lucrative "Waiting List Service". The board will meet some time before October to make a decision on whether to amend its contracts with VeriSign to allow the WLS.
"There has been a great deal of input on WLS," an ICANN spokesperson said. "The NC's report is of particular interest... however, there are many other inputs that have been/will be received."
While the board does not have to follow the NC recommendation, critics say it would be unwise to allow a service to go ahead which they say will give VeriSign a monopoly on the domain name secondary market at the expense of consumers and about 30 rival registrars that already have similar services.
"It would wipe us out and it would eliminate all consumer choice," Clint Page, president of domain registrar Dotster Inc told ComputerWire. Dotster operates a WLS-like service called NameWinner, which allows people to bid for the chance to register a domain whose registration is expiring and that would become obsolete if WLS went ahead.
Under WLS, registrars would be able to offer customers first refusal on expiring domains. For an annual fee, that in many cases would be larger than the cost of actually registering a domain, a customer would be able to take over an already-registered domain, if the existing registrant chose not to renew it.
More at: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/26363.html
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