Cost Of Domain Names About To Go Up

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The body that oversees that workings of the Internet has approved a plan to allow VeriSign Inc. to raise prices to register new Web sites using ".com".

VeriSign, which manages the registry under which .com is operated, will be allowed to raise prices charged to register new .com Web sites by 7 percent in four of the next six years.

VeriSign had sought the right to implement the increases on an annual basis, but the proposal was opposed by companies that register domain names, such as Network Solutions, Register.com and GoDaddy.com.

Those companies, which pay a $6 fee to VeriSign each time they sell a new site name, argued that VeriSign should not be allowed to raise prices unless it could prove its costs were increasing as well.

The agreement, approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers on Tuesday, still needs final approval from the U.S. Commerce Department. ICANN's board approved the deal 9 to 5, with one abstention.

VeriSign last year won the right to continue operating the registry for .net addresses.

Shares in VeriSign rose 10 cents, or 0.4 percent, to $23.76 in mid-afternoon Nasdaq trading.

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Personally, im all for the price of domains being raised.

Thats going to be one way to weed out some of the hobbyist webmasters who are flooding the web with 'free' porn.

Regards,

Lee

I've always disliked that entire business. It's just kind of phoney. They look to me kind of like guys going around trying to sell air.

Steve

I would be shocked if the panic actually turned into reality. Just because they asked for the right to increase prices doesn't mean they'll actually do it. What this does is gives them the ability to keep .com prices on par with the rest should they rise.