The ICANN board this week agreed to defer its decision to award .com control to VeriSign until 2nd April this year following complaints by other registries that the decision meant unfair competition because the company acts as both registry (i.e. it's in control of the .com database, meaning all domain name re-sellers pay it a commission on each .com sale) and as registrar (directly selling domain names, in competition with re-sellers). ICANN is consequently inviting public comment until 31st March.
John Robert, director of registrar Marsgerm Technologies, argues on ICANN’s on-line message board:
“Fairness can only achieved by the separation of the registry and the registrar. Without the separation, Verisign can use the $6.00 domain fee from other registrars to support its competition with the other registrars. Or without paying a fee, hoarding expired domain names so that other registrars can not register them for their clients.
“We do not think ICANN has offered sufficient evidence or even explanation to support its argument that the separation is not necessary. As a domain reseller with ample experience dealing with registrants, we strongly believe that the fairness of competition among the registrars has not been achieved. VeriSign must separate its dual function in order to maximally secure a real fair competition.
“On the other hand, we do not see any potential damage to the Internet community could be caused by this separation. The big loss for Verisign, though, is that it can no longer use the domain fee to support its competition with its rivals.”
Comments can be made at ICANN’s web site, www.icann.org, or by e-mail to ICANN's Vice President, Louis Touton, [email protected].
ICANN is also facing pressure over its recent decision to introduce multilingual domain names because there is no technical standard to ensure compatibility over many differing systems connecting internet users.
Incompatibility could prevent users accessing the web site they want or they could have problems sending and receiving e-mails to and from certain users. The new names are presently being issued on an experimental basis.
ICANN has ordered a working group to report to it by June with recommendations on technical compatibility and any issues of user privacy and intellectual property rights.