Despite Various Lawsuits, ICANN Approves VeriSign's Wait List Service

from the good-or-bad? dept

I imagine that this is not the last we are going to hear on this topic. Despite lawsuits from VeriSign and a group of domain registrars over this very issue, ICANN has moved forward and approved VeriSign's plans for a "wait-listing" service. The service is designed so that people can basically put in bids for domain names before they even expired, thus creating a master list. One potential benefit (or problem, depending on your point of view) is that it could act as insurance against companies who forget to renew their own domain. The smaller registrars claim this will harm their own business in selling expired domain names - which is likely to be true. However, not all actions that harm other companies' ability to make money are illegal. In many areas, that's just business. The real question, from a legal standpoint, is whether or not this goes beyond VeriSign's granted rights, and is basically allowing them to leverage their (legal) monopoly position into other areas. That's something for the courts to decide, but I'm sure many will find the timing of ICANN's approval (so soon after being sued by everyone) questionable.

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