The Freename Forum

The internet administration ICANN has published the draft contract to extend the ‘Registry Agreement’ for .com domains with the US company VeriSign Inc. According to the agreement, VeriSign will continue to be authorised to regularly increase fees, but must accept takedown rules.

VeriSign's right to manage domains ending in .com, which has existed since 2001, currently rests on two pillars: the Registry Agreement (RA) with ICANN and the Cooperative Agreement with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which reports to the US Department of Commerce. The current RA expires on 30 November 2024, and for a long time the extension seemed to be a mere formality. In recent months, however, there have been calls to re-regulate the allocation of .com through a tender process and, in particular, to limit the possibilities of increasing fees; the American Economic Liberties Project, the Demand Progress Education Fund and the Revolving Door Project, among others, have accused ICANN and VeriSign of forming a de facto cartel that leads to excessive profits and, together with the NTIA, represents an ‘incestuous legal triangle’. However, the discussion came to an end on 2 August 2024 at the latest, when the NTIA announced that it would be renewing its contractual relationship with VeriSign to manage .com. At the same time, however, it announced its intention to hold talks with VeriSign about pricing in the .com market.

Anyone hoping for more favourable fees will therefore be disappointed. The current draft contract for the extension of the RA, which ICANN published on 26 September 2024, still contains a clause that gives VeriSign the right to increase the fees for .com domains by seven percent in the last four years of each six-year contract period. VeriSign has always utilised this right in the past. What is new, however, is a clause according to which the transaction fee of US$ 0.25 can change in future on the basis of the ‘Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, U.S. City Average (1982-1984 = 100)’, i.e. it can rise or (which is unlikely) fall in line with the consumer price index. The transaction fee must be paid to ICANN when registering, renewing or transferring a .com domain. However, this increase must never affect .com alone, but must also be exercised ‘under multiple other registry agreements in a manner that does not single out Registry Operator’. In other words: ICANN will increase fees for all gTLDs in the future. Furthermore, VeriSign will be subject to amended ‘DNS Abuse’ rules and will be required to take prompt and appropriate remedial action reasonably necessary to prevent the misuse of a .com domain; similar rules exist for virtually every other gTLD. Furthermore, VeriSign must report ‘any cyber incident, physical intrusion or infrastructure damages’ to ICANN. With around 157 million registered .com domains, VeriSign is therefore far more exposed to abuse than any other registry of a generic domain extension.

The public has until 5 November 2024 to comment on the draft agreement. In view of the discussions on fees, particularly in June and July 2024, it can be assumed that this will be actively utilised. Nevertheless, the final report with all comments received is to be submitted to the ICANN Board of Directors for a decision by 19 November 2024 at the latest. It is currently considered virtually impossible that there will be any significant changes to the draft.

The draft Registry Agreement for .com can be found at:
https://www.icann.org/en/public-comment ... -2024#main