Senator Elizabeth Warren Calls for Antitrust Investigation into Domain Registrar Verisign
WASHINGON, D.C. – Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is claiming that internet domain registrar Verisign is a “monopoly” and is subsequently demanding that an antitrust investigation be carried out against the company.
Working in conjunction with Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Warren sent a letter last week to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) that accuses the top-level domain (TLD) market of being tightly controlled by Verisign, whom she claims unfairly prevents competition when it comes to the coveted “.com” domain.
Indeed, Warren said, if you want a .com domain, it’s Verisign – and Verisign only – that you must pay the annual renewal fee to.
Verisign has squeezed customers to enrich its investors while doing little to improve service,” Warren and Nadler said in their joint letter to the NTIA. “Verisign is ripping off the owners of 150 million .com websites by charging over $10 annually for each .com registration, making over $1 billion with its predatory pricing scheme that the Company then uses to pad its shareholders’ pockets.”
Warren and Nadler allege that Verisign’s stranglehold over the .com domain grew tighter following loosened regulations during the Trump Administration that allowed the company to hike its fees by over 30 percent.
The American Economic Liberties Project and other organizations have also been critical of Verisign, and have called up the NTIA and the Justice Department to not renew the no-bid contract they have with the registrar due to its purported ironclad grip upon the TLD industry.
Verisign is a prime example of an economic termite, and has used its government-approved monopoly over domains to hike prices with no justification for far too long,” said American Economic Liberties Project Research Manager Laurel Kilgour.
Verisign has refuted the allegations in its blog, claiming that there is no monopoly of the .com domain and that the arguments against the company are comprised of “factual inaccuracies, a misunderstanding of core technical concepts, and misinterpretations regarding pricing, competition and market dynamics in the domain name industry.”
About The Author: John Colascione is Chief Executive Officer of SEARCHEN NETWORKS®. He specializes in Website Monetization, is a Google AdWords Certified Professional, authored a how-to book called ”Mastering Your Website‘, and is a key player in several online businesses.
Hmm, Verisign is a registry, not a registrar. Maybe the original post was updated, as it now says “Warren Accuses Verisign of Web Domain Registration Monopoly “.
Ouch. There’s only one thing in the universe that is certainly infinite, said a wise man.
Domain name registries are natural monopolies _over_their_managed_TLD_. The applicable market is further divided into registrars and resellers, but indeed the registry (thousands of them, one per TLD) sets the bottom price for a name in their respective namespace.