Domain Name Owners reject ICANN/VeriSign Settlement: Survey

Survey shows only 25% of domain owners support agreement.

[Editors note: this is the eighth in a series of posts with results from the 2006 Reglike survey. The complete results of the survey will be posted soon.]

Opposition to the proposed VeriSign agreement with ICANN is growing. A number of registrars released formal opposition remarks yesterday.

Results from the 2006 Reglike survey echo these sentiments. Of the 582 survey respondents in 81 countries, only 25% stated they approve of the proposed settlement.

The domain industry is concerned regarding VeriSign’s presumptive right to renewal and proposed wholesale price increases for registration. VeriSign right now collects $6.00 per .com domain registration but the agreement would allow it to hike this fee 7% per year. This doesn’t make much sense given that other domains, when opened up to proper bidding, have lowered their wholesale registry fee. Given .com’s scale, it ought to technically cost less at the registry level. The initial costs of running a registry are high whether there is one registration or a million. There’s little difference between the nominal cost of the 40,000,000 domain and the 40,000,001 domain.

I’m not opposed to VeriSign retaining control of the registry, but the terms of the current agreement are at odds with the reality of the industry.