news ICANN and VeriSign Reach Deal for Ten Year .Com Agreement Extension

Back in 2005, Verisign used its financial and legal advantage over ICANN to push it into an agreement where Verisign retained the dot-com contract on very favorable terms: it retained control, plus a presumptive renewal of the contract, and was given the ability to increase prices by seven percent in four of the six years of the contract term.

In return, it gave ICANN what it wanted: recognition that ICANN had authority over the domain name system.

Internet users attempted to halt that agreement and even filed several lawsuits in an effort to open it up to public scrutiny. Where Verisign at the time charged $6 wholesale per dot-com domain, other companies in the industry said they could run the registry for a third of that price – just $2 a domain.

When the contract was renewed again in 2012, ICANN was planning to give Verisign the exact same deal including the same price-rising rights, but the US government intervened and said the contract should not include any price increases.

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