Domain registrar VeriSign has beaten several other companies in competitive bidding and should therefore remain the administrator of the .net Internet domain, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers said March 28.
VeriSign has two weeks to negotiate a new agreement to keep administrative control of the domain, an agreement that would be worth at least $20 million a year for VeriSign—which already earns more than $200 a year administering.com.
VeriSign has not eluded controversy in the past, from the theft and recovery of Gary Kremen’s Sex.com domain—of which Kremen charged that Network Solutions (VeriSign bought the company in 2000) had some responsibility for, since the theft occurred by way of a forged letter to the registrar that the registrar allegedly failed to verify—to a controversial 2003 program that redirected Netizens misspelling .com and .net addresses to a VeriSign search engine.
That program was suspended shortly after VeriSign launched it, and VeriSign subsequently sued ICANN on charges that it blocked such efforts to offer new profitable and beneficial services.
For that reason, ICANN hired outside company Telcordia Technologies to evaluate .net administration applications, the better to avoid a conflict of interest in light of the VeriSign litigation, which is still pending. VeriSign prevailed in the .net renewal process by stressing its experience and overall stability, apparently winning over rival bidders’ emphases on international appeal and the need for competition.
ICANN will hold a public comment period while the new administrative agreement is negotiated. The U.S. federal government has to approve the renewal, which would take effect July 1.
If VeriSign can’t finalize a .net deal with ICANN, ICANN will start negotiating with the second-place applicant, Sentan Registry Services, which is a partnership between the operators of the .biz and the Japanese .jp domains. The third place finisher was said to be Afilias, the .info administrator, followed by DENIC, which administers Germany’s .de.
