U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Congressman Jerry Nadler of New York have called on government agencies to investigate what they say is the “predatory pricing” of .com web addresses, the Internet's prime real estate.
In a letter delivered today to the Justice Department and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a branch of the Commerce Department that advises the president, the two Democrats accuse VeriSign, the company that manages the .com top-level domain, of abuse its market dominance to overcharge customers.
In 2018, under the Donald Trump administration, the NTIA changed the terms for how much VeriSign could charge for .com domains. The company has since increased prices by 30 percent, the letter claims, although the service remains identical and could reportedly be provided much cheaper by others.
“VeriSign is exploiting its monopolistic power to charge millions of users exorbitant prices to register a .com top-level domain,” the letter alleges. “VeriSign has not changed or improved its services; it simply raised prices because it has a government-guaranteed monopoly.”
“We intend to respond to Senator Warren and Representative Nadler's letter, which repeats inaccuracies and misleading statements that have been aggressively promoted for years by a small, self-serving group of domain name investors,” Verisign spokesman David McGuire said in a statement. a statement to WIRED. “We look forward to correcting this record and working with policymakers on real solutions that benefit internet users.”
In an August blog post entitled “Setting the Record Straight,” the company claimed that the discourse surrounding .com's management had been “distorted by factual inaccuracies, a misunderstanding of key technical concepts and misinterpretations regarding pricing, competition and market dynamics in the world. the domain name industry.”
In the same blog post, the company states that it does not have a monopoly because there are 1,200 generic top-level domains managed by other entities, including .org, .shop, .ai and .uk.
While far from a household name, VeriSign generates around $1.5 billion in revenue annually to maintain a certain part of the Internet's inscrutable sewer system.
In their letter, Warren and Nadler allege that VeriSign has abused its exclusive right to charge for highly sought-after .com addresses to undermine its revenues and increase its stock price – all at the expense of customers for whom there is no viable alternative .
