March 9, 2004 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- According to reports released on Monday, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (icann.org) passed the controversial VeriSign (verisign.com) waiting list service (WLS) to the US Department of Commerce for final approval.
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Amid legal efforts by domain registrar groups to stop the service from launching, ICANN voted almost unanimously to approve changes to VeriSign's .com and .net registry agreements that would allow the company to offer the service. The contract changes now await the approval of the DoC.
The DoC's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the group responsible for handling the approval, has not commented on whether it is likely to approve the proposal. However, most observers speculate that the approval will come quickly.
The WLS service would give VeriSign control over expiring .com and .net domain names, allowing the company to offer a service that would let customers stake their claims on domains that had not yet expired. The service has seen high-profile challenges from companies like GoDaddy, which argues that the WLS will destroy existing services that already allow users to claim expiring domains.
At the conclusion of its quarterly public meeting in Rome this week, ICANN's board also announced that it has begun a process through which VeriSign's contract to run the .net domain could be handed over to another company. VeriSign's contract expires June 30, 2005.
