On Tue, 25 Oct 2005, Florian Weimer wrote:
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8DEL2TO7.htm? campaign_id=apn_tech_down&chan=tc
I don't understand what VeriSign receives in return for their kowtow (under the agreement, they basically waive any right to criticize ICANN's role).
They get to continue to be .COM registry forever as new agreement would extend to 2012 and then automatically extended further without formal process as it happened recently for .NET. They also are going to be able to increase registry fees for .COM by 7% per year which to put it in perspective can potentially be $2 increase 4 years from now.
Two possible explanations:
2+2=5, right? :)
* ICANN signalled a positive outcome of a future Sitefinder review under the new process.
* ICANN promised to grant VeriSign the DNSSEC root and .ARPA maintenance without tender (the "Root Server Management Transition Agreement" goes into that direction; actually, the .ARPA stuff is the interesting one).
* VeriSign has recognized that they couldn't win in court, and suddenly want to play nice.
-- William Leibzon Elan Networks william@elan.net