February 16, 2006 – (HOSTSEARCH) – Founder and CEO of Web Hosting Provider GoDaddy.com (http://www.godaddy.com), Mr. Bob Parsons, has voiced disapproval of the pending agreement between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and VeriSign. "The proposed agreement is a bad deal for our customers and the Internet community as a whole," said Mr. Parsons. "We will fight to convince the ICANN Board of Directors not to accept it."
ICANN, the Internet’s governing body, has been involved in a lawsuit with VeriSign, the managing body of domains with ‘.com’ and ‘.net’ extensions. A proposed settlement agreement between the organizations would enable VeriSign to increase registration fees by 7% annually (in four years of the next six) and gives VeriSign indefinite control of the ‘.com’ registry. With the costs of technologies utilized in domain management continually reducing, Mr. Parsons feels fee increases are unjustified.
"Under no circumstances should VeriSign be allowed to raise ‘.com’ prices without cost-based justification," Mr. Parsons added. "If VeriSign does request an increase, it needs to result in competitive bidding for the registry contract. This would certainly create lower prices, not higher, just as it did for the ‘.net’ registry." Mr. Parsons added, ‘‘.com’ domain names still account for more than 80% of net new registrations. If there is any automatic change in pricing in the agreement, it should be for an annual decrease resulting from economies of scale and efficiencies that naturally occur in our industry."
In addition to reservations about possible cost increases, GoDaddy has questioned ‘the closed nature of the process involved in this settlement’. Although ICANN has suggested that VeriSign invested $200 million in development and infrastructure under the as per the agreement between the two organizations, VeriSign's reports have been kept confidential. "ICANN must be open and transparent in its actions. We need to see these reports made public and verified by a third party. Internet registrars, service providers and users demand that ICANN be held accountable," added Mr. Parsons.
