November 29, 2005

A trade group calling itself The World of Domain Name Developers has filed a lawsuit in federal court yesterday, alleging that a recent settlement between ICANN and VeriSign over control of the .com domain violates US anti-trust laws.

Last month, ICANN and VeriSign reached a settlement that allows for VeriSign to maintain control of the lucrative .com registry until 2012.

The plaintiffs in the case have asked the court to prevent this from happening. They allege that ceding control of the .com registry to VeriSign is tantamount to permitting a monopoly and violates federal laws against price fixing.

The original dispute between VeriSign and ICANN revolved around VeriSign's Site Finder service, which redirected Internet users who typed incorrect addresses to Web pages filled with sponsored links instead of common error pages.

Critics argued the service was an abuse of power by VeriSign, since it received money from those who benefited from the traffic.

VeriSign gave in to the pressure and suspended the service. The October settlement resolved this dispute and other points of contention. It also extended VeriSign's control over the .com domain from 2007 to 2012.

VeriSign makes a reported $6 per year from each of the 35 million .com domain names.

Source: The WHIR