The U.S. government has approved a deal under which VeriSign, which has operated the .com domain since 1999, will retain control of the domain until 2012. The proposal, drafted by VeriSign and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), was presented to the U.S. Department of Commerce in March of this year. Since that time, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), an agency of the Department of Commerce, has been reviewing the proposal and comments on it. Specifically, many international organizations complained that control of the world’s most popular Internet domain should not lie with a U.S. company. Other criticisms included the length of the contract, which some said was too long. In the end, the agencies involved approved the contract, which includes limits on price increases.
BBC, 4 December 2006
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6199394.stm
You’ve been reading an excerpt from Edupage:
To subscribe or access the Edupage archive, visit http://www.educause.edu/Edupage/639