| Title | The Curious Tale of ICANN, Verisign, Claims of Subterfuge, and the $135m .Web Dot-word | |
| Date | Tuesday December 11 2018, @02:37PM | |
| Author | Fnord666 | |
| Topic | ||
| from the follow-the-money dept. | ||
Submitted via IRC for takyon
The curious tale of ICANN, Verisign, claims of subterfuge, and the $135m .Web dot-word
An ugly struggle over the .Web top-level domain may soon spill into public view again, after one of the companies vying for control of the dot-word demanded an independent review of DNS overlord ICANN's handling of the saga.
More than two years ago, the internet infrastructure industry was agape when an unknown company paid $135m for the rights to sell .web internet addresses: the sum paid was three times the previous record paid for a new dot-word, and seven times the average auction price for a top-level domain.
All that money went directly into the coffers of ICANN, a financial sum that was more than double its annual budget. That was unusual since the vast majority of previous similar dot-word auctions had been decided in private between the bidders themselves with the proceeds split among them.
It soon emerged that the unknown winner – a company called Nu Dot Co – had been secretly funded by the owner of the dot-com registry, Verisign. But before that information emerged, many in the industry were astonished when Nu Dot Co refused to agree to a private auction and insisted all the money go to ICANN.
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printed from SoylentNews, The Curious Tale of ICANN, Verisign, Claims of Subterfuge, and the $135m .Web Dot-word on 2025-12-14 01:42:10