US senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and congressman Jerry Nadler of New York have called on government bodies to investigate what they allege is the “predatory pricing” of .com web addresses, the internet’s prime real estate.
In a letter delivered today to the Department of Justice and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a branch of the Department of Commerce that advises the president, the two Democrats accuse VeriSign, the company that administers the .com top-level domain, of abusing its market dominance to overcharge customers.
In 2018, under the Donald Trump administration, the NTIA modified the terms on how much VeriSign could charge for .com domains. The company has since hiked prices by 30 percent, the letter claims, though its service remains identical and could allegedly be provided far more cheaply by others.
“VeriSign is exploiting its monopoly power to charge millions of users excessive prices for registering a .com top-level domain,” the letter claims. “VeriSign hasn’t changed or improved its services; it has simply raised prices because it holds a government-ensured monopoly.”
VeriSign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But in an August blog post entitled “Setting the Record Straight,” the company claimed that discourse around its management of .com had been “distorted by factual inaccuracies, a misunderstanding of core technical concepts, and misinterpretations regarding pricing, competition, and market dynamics in the domain name industry.”
In the same blog post, the company argues that it is not operating a monopoly because there are 1,200 generic top-level domains operated by other entities, including .org, .shop, .ai, and .uk.
Though far from a household name, VeriSign takes in about $1.5 billion in revenue each year for servicing its particular section of the internet’s inscrutable plumbing.
In their letter, Warren and Nadler allege that VeriSign has exploited its exclusive right to charge for highly sought-after .com addresses to juice its revenues and drive up its share price—all at the expense of customers for whom there is no viable alternative.
The letter claims that separate agreements with the NTIA and Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a nonprofit established by the Commerce Department to oversee the web’s domain name system, have allowed VeriSign to establish monopoly power. The former sets how much the company can charge its customers for registering .com addresses, while the latter assigns VeriSign as the “sole operator” of the .com domain. The letter also alleges that VeriSign might be in violation of the Sherman Act.
The NTIA’s decision in 2018 to lift the price cap imposed on VeriSign also benefited ICANN, which in its role as overseer can reject price increases proposed by domain registry services. ICANN signed an agreement with VeriSign in 2020, sanctioning the maximum allowable price increases in return for $20 million over a five-year period. Thus, allege Warren and Nadler, “Verisign and ICANN may have a collusive relationship.”
In June, a coalition of activist groups wrote to the DOJ and NTIA to express similar allegations. “ICANN and VeriSign function as a de facto cartel, and the NTIA should stop sanctioning the ‘incestuous legal triangle’ that serves as a shield to deflect overdue antitrust scrutiny into their otherwise likely illegal collusive relationship,” the coalition claims. The group urged the government to “stop this cycle of exploitation” by refusing to renew the relationship between the NTIA and VeriSign.
Neither ICANN nor the NTIA responded immediately to requests for comment.
The NTIA has since indicated that it will renew its agreement with VeriSign. However, the terms of that agreement are up for review on November 30, before the start of Trump’s second term, leaving the outgoing Democratic administration with an opportunity to put in place pricing rules that will apply for a six-year period, as a parting gift.
In an August letter, the NTIA told VeriSign that it “had questions related to [the company’s] pricing” and wanted to “discuss possible solutions.” VeriSign said it welcomed “an opportunity to have this important discussion.” But Warren and Nadler are now publicly pressing the NTIA to make sure that customers cannot be overcharged by VeriSign—and pressing the DOJ to review for potential antitrust violations, too.
“Verisign has squeezed customers to enrich its investors while doing nothing to improve service,” they claim. “NTIA and DOJ should take action to ensure that over the next six years, VeriSign’s consumers are charged fair prices for .com registration.”
