VeriSign given control of .net until 2011

Third special meeting grants approval

By Kieren McCarthy • Get more from this author

Posted in Music and Media, 9th June 2005 11:31 GMT

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ICANN has finally voted in favour of giving VeriSign control of the .net registry for the next six years.

The Board handed back control of the registry on Tuesday at the third special meeting in a month called to sort out what has become a highly controversial issue.

The decision was announced late yesterday - 36 hours after the meeting - and its minutes and resolutions are still unpublished.

At a meeting last week, the vote to approve VeriSign fell after four board members abstained from voting and two opposed the motion. With four members absent at the meeting, ICANN ensured that the same didn't happen again this week.

As an indication of the anger and confusion surrounding the redelegation, ICANN has also produced a lengthy document [pdf] detailing the entire process. It details each step in the process and the issues raised along the way. Crucially however there is no mention of the significant changes made solely by ICANN after the public evaluation process which had the decisive impact of handing control to VeriSign.

There is also no room for the public comments made by the chairman of the committee charged with drawing up the evaluation criteria, Philip Sheppard, who charged ICANN with altering his report to end up with a situation that represented the exact opposite to what had been intended.

Either way, VeriSign now has control of the .net registry from 1 July, when its existing contract runs out, until 2011.

ICANN president and CEO Dr. Paul Twomey commented: "We would like to thank all five qualified applicants, the entire Internet community, ICANN’s Generic Supporting Organisation, and Telcordia for the work in making this a successful process."

Large chunks of the Internet community will be wondering whether ICANN has designated a new meaning to the word "successful".®