ICANN and VeriSign reach agreement

[Larwee]

Many of you will remember Sitefinder that VeriSign was using to send surfers to when they typed in a non-existent web address.

ICANN told VeriSign to get rid of it because it contained advertising and VeriSign said that ICANN can't tell them what to do, so they took ICANN to court.

The case was thrown out of court so VeriSign took it to another court.

ICANN and VeriSign have now reached a deal and all litigation is being dropped.

Under the settlement VeriSign will keep its registrar status over the .com domain until 2012. Presently there are over 35 million .com names registered and VeriSign gets $6.00 for each one.

The settlement also states that VeriSign shall "reiterate its support for ICANN as the appropriate technical coordination body for the DNS, in particular with respect to Internet domain names, IP address numbers, root server system management functions, and protocol parameter and port numbers."

The agreement also states that Verisign will also promote the current status quo of having domain registrations managed by the private sector - such as VeriSign - and be overseen by ICANN. In addition, VeriSign will not be involved with any third-party activities that seek to undermine ICANN, such as through funding or other means, although that does not mean VeriSign can't disagree with ICANN within its own dealings.

VeriSign has no plans to bring back Sitefinder.

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...SIGN-ICANN.xml