The U.S. Department of Commerce has approved the ICANN-Verisign agreement

The U.S. Department of Commerce has approved the ICANN-Verisign agreement, clearing the final hurdle for Verisign to retain control of the lucrative .COM domain. The U.S. Department of Commerce Friday approved the landmark agreement between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and VeriSign Inc., the world's largest registrar of top-level domain (TLD) names, with few changes. However, the DoC did increase its oversight over ICANN and protect itself from antitrust litigation. VeriSign continues its domination in the registry and registrar businesses, with the expiration date of the .net domain moved up six months, to June 30, 2005. It's a date that could potentially be moved up two years, if the DoC finds competition standards have not been met. To quantify that, government officials will take a "snapshot" on Dec. 31, 2002 of the registry market share from the four new global top level domains (gTLDs) and compare it to the .com and .net domains. If market share is less than 10 percent, VeriSign's .net ownership will expire Nov. 10, 2003. The four domains to be evaluated are .biz, .info, .name and .pro. A DoC official said ICANN and VeriSign will take the conditions and incorporate them into a revised agreement, which should be approved by all parties in the coming months.