NSI Abuse

by Chris Byrnes  (JEAH Communications, LLC)

A few years back, the government split up the monopoly Network Solutions held on the registration market.

Now, at that time, they still allowed Network Solutions to control the global registry (the thing that all competing registrars report back to so all the data is kept in sync).  As you may know, Network Solutions is now owned by Verisign.

Our good friends at Verisign not only operate two registrars (registrars.com, and Network Solutions), but also this central registry called "Verisign Global Registry."

Lots of domains have been expiring in the last few months as people forget to pay their bills, dot com companies flop, etc.  When these domains expire, they are supposed to be deleted within a maximum timeframe of 30 to 45 days.  Otherwise the registrar must pay an additional registry fee to keep the domain active.  (No registrar will do this if they don't get paid by the client, of course).  This is all according to the global registry policy.

Let's do a WHOIS lookup on a domain I know is expired, because I've been trying to register it: skullbocks.com

skullbocks.com, of course, was the domain name used in the popular movie Antitrust.

This domain is registered at Network Solutions and it says "Record expires on 05-May-2001."  So I contacted Verisign and asked why the domain hasn't been deleted yet.  No response.

I spoke with an official at a competing registrar who told me, "Verisign essentially is allowed to break its own rules.  It just says that it pays itself the additional registry fee to keep the domain alive.  In all honesty, Verisign could continue to hold onto as many expired domains for however long it wanted, and never be breaking the registry rules."

ICANN, the non-profit corporation that was formed to assume responsibility for the IP address space allocation, protocol parameter assignment, domain name system management, and root server system management functions, has yet to adopt a policy that supersedes the policies put in place by Verisign in this matter.