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Vint Cerf was supposed to be the star attraction in Vancouver this week at ICANN’s annual meeting, but even the father of the Internet can’t stop the squabbling among the industry players his work helped spawn.

The politics around the domain name system’s governance were already making international headlines before a coalition of vendors slapped ICANN and VeriSign with a pair of on Wednesday. Critics harped on the fact that United States, despite the Internet’s global nature, was unwilling to loosen its hold ICANN. As the outcry mounted, the U.S. was a highly visible villain, and continues to be even after the parties reached a settlement which some observers called meaningless. Far less visible to most Internet users, but potentially as dangerous, is the degree of control which VeriSign has enjoyed over the dot-com domain and the registration process in general.

ICANN and VeriSign have been at legal loggerheads for several years, ever since the company was forced to take down its controversial Site Finder service. This was a service which rerouted non-existent URLs, or ones that had been typed in wrong, to a page on VeriSign's Network Solutions' registrar service. Unfair competitive advantage? You bet it was, and other registrars, including some in Canada, screamed bloody murder about it. Presumably shocked that ICANN would dare to exert the kind of authority it is supposed to wield, VeriSign sued, and ICANN countersued. The two parties have since settled, and guess what? VerSign’s contract to run the main database for dot-coms has been renewed – until 2012, when it gets first crack at another extension.

A Canadian domain name registrar, Momentus Corp., is leading the Coalition For ICANN Transparency (CFIT), along with peers such as Pool.com. Its challenge will not necessarily be to prove that VeriSign is a monopoly – that is pretty much been accepted, though reluctantly, by the entire industry – but that it is abusing that position. Then again, that might not be so challenging, either. Besides the Site Finder fiasco, domain name customers noticed three years ago that they were getting phony “renewal” notices from VeriSign that would immediate transfer business from their existing registrar. Despite an investigation from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, VeriSign endured a few days of bad publicity and a slap on the wrists. The ICANN renewal, meanwhile, carries the whiff of a backroom deal intended to avoid further legal costs. Instead of hush money, think of a hush contract. 

The real problem for CFIT is that its primary complaint centres around expired domain names. Right now Momentus and others crawl the Web for names once they come up for sale, which are described as “back order” services. VeriSign proposes an auction system for these back order domains, from which it would receive 10 per cent of the proceeds, and putting a dent in it’s competitor’s businesses. The self-interest from CFIT won’t endear them to any judge, and in some ways an auction makes sense. I just wish it wasn’t VeriSign that plans to run it.

VeriSign’s other lawsuit comes from a group of Internet marketers who accuse the company of price-fixing. Right now, for example, the company stands to make an extra $17 million a year if it raises prices by seven per cent in 2007. This may be the more critical case, because it questions VeriSign’s position in the domain name economy. Unfortunately, by the time these suits make their way through the courts, VeriSign will probably be mid-way through its latest contract. Despite its setbacks, this is a company that is relentless in its pursuit of the American dream. It’s registrars everywhere else who are enduring the nightmare.

sschick@itbusiness.ca

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