Coalition for ICANN Transparency Amends ICANN Complaint

By Derek Iwasiuk
DomainInformer.com
March 20, 2006

The Coalition for ICANN Transparency (cfit.info) announced this week that it has filed an amended complaint in the US District Court in San Jose.

Domain registrars in general were upset earlier this month by a settlement that would give VeriSign control of the .com registry through 2012, allowing a yearly cost increase of 7 percent.

The new complaint includes a detailed account of what the organization asserts is anti-competitive behavior by VeriSign (verisign.com) and ICANN (icann.org), intended to to protect the .com and .net registries from market forces. CFIT also claims that ICANN allowed VeriSign to have an unfair competitive edge for .net.

In its settlement negotiations for .com, says CFIT, VeriSign learned of material changes in ICANN's registry contractual terms. These included the release of price caps and changes in the approval process for new registry services that enabled VeriSign to make a more competitive bid for .net than it could have had it been forced to comply with the same rules as other bidders.

Since the amended complaint addresses many of the key issues raised by the court in a recent pre-trial ruling, says CFIT, the case will be allowed to move forward quickly.