Nickname: Independent Observer

Review: This is a good deal for the real stakeholders of the Internet, the Web site owners and they all want this to stay with Verisign. If Verisign makes a $1 or $2 more from me a year to make sure that my site never goes down by some cyber attack, so be it. Let's get this thing approved already.

Date reviewed: Jun 25, 2006 11:59 PM

Nickname: londoner

Review: If it ain't broke don't fix it, especially by getting politicians involved. Believe it or not, some things operate most efficiently as regulated monopolies. Competition for competition's sake is as bad a doctrine as any.

Date reviewed: Jun 22, 2006 3:21 PM

Nickname: Hutch

Review: The VeriSign contract negotiations took over two years and thousands of hours of staff time at ICANN. It is a fair settlement for all parties, excepting the self-interested Internet registries that want a chunk of the .com revenues. The folderol about 7% un-checked raises in .com registry fees amounts to less than $2 per year for a single .com domain registration fee. Any business with .com Web site is spending thousands of dollars each year on their Web site. The really costly changes that ICANN have made to the structure of TLDs [top level domains] for business owners were the opening-up of the ccTLDs [one for each country -.us, .md, .tv, .uk, .ca etc] and the new gTLDs [as many as we want - .aero, .info .name .coop .pro]. Now instead of registering your business once as a .com {~$50/yr}? many businesses will be registering in each country and all the generic top level domains ? {thousands of $ - depending on country, etc} ? now that's something to worry about!

Date reviewed: Jun 22, 2006 6:22 AM

Nickname: Jens

Review: As someone with a fair bit of CIO experience it occurs to me that what is being proposed by ICANN is a fairly straightforward IT services contract and is not particularly out of the norm. There is a high up-front cost that Verisign expects to recoup over time with a guarantee that they don't have to fight a bidding war with 1000 registrars once a year. The red herring in this whole debate is cost. The cost of domain registration is not the race to zero most registrars would have us believe. They argue that since the cost of technology is decreasing, so too should the cost of domain registration. Ask your friendly neighborhood CIO whether the price he pays for Cisco routers has any impact on his cost of providing IT services. The environment gets more complex, his user base grows, his security threats become more onerous and his costs increase. The question is not whether ICANN and Verisign should do this deal but how it will positively impact the service delivered to buyers of domains.

Date reviewed: Jun 20, 2006 6:41 PM

Nickname: Steve

Review: Mr. Boucher seems to be trying to get political mileage on an issue that all reasoned observers understand is good for Internet stability. But virtually all international e-commerce is done on .com. VeriSign has done a great job in avoiding cyberterrorisum and keeping this domain active, and therefore deserves the assurance that these technology investments do not go to waste. His grandstanding on this matter confuses the issue and has the potential to create the exact type of issues with foreign goverments that he claims he is trying to avoid. Let VeriSign and ICANN work this out and keep the goverment interference out. That's the way it's supposed to work.

Date reviewed: Jun 19, 2006 4:35 PM

Nickname: Rollercoaster

Review: You, my friend, have it all wrong and probably based on the quotes you utilized and stands you took demonstrate just how little you know about both VeriSign, ICANN, the Internet in general, and the governing status that the Dept of Commerce places with both ICANN and VeriSign. First, the Tunis agreement is there specifically as you correctly stated to protect the Internet from hostile foreign govts and private buisnesses. Second, VeriSign was awarded the sole right to manage .com because it has been doin it since 95', doing it extremely well, and keeps the Internet essentially running error free. Why don't you state what the real issue here is? That would be that VeriSign's competitors are complaining because they think they cannot pass through a measly 7% rate hike VeriSign will get for managing 50% more .com registries than it had last time they were allowed to raise rates. Those registries (over 1,000) charge thousands of dollars for .com names. Who's really fleecing whom?

Date reviewed: Jun 19, 2006 3:42 PM