ICANN faces monopoly action

God and UN next...

The World Association of Domain Name Developers (WADND) is taking legal action against Verisign and ICANN.

The action centres on ICANN's recent decision to hand over control of .com and .net addresses to Verisign - the 2005 Registry Agreement. WADND believes the agreement is "an unlawful contract to fix prices and monopolize the ".com" and ".net" domain name markets.

Verisign currently controls the domains and the latest agreement extends this until 2012. After this the deal would be automatically extended unless Verisign went bust.

ICANN said the lawsuit was an attempt to detract attention from its upcoming meeting in Vancouver. It said: "ICANN is currently seeking public comments and comments from its various industry and stakeholders groups on a proposed Verisign and Icann settlement arrangement announced on 24 October 2005," said the statement.

"The lawsuit appears to be an effort to divert the Internet community discussions during the ICANN meeting, to the issues raised by a specific industry sector"

There'll be full coverage of the Vancouver meeting from the Reg's very own Kieren McCarthy.

You can see the actual complaint (pdf) here. More details on the BBC here.®