Commerce, Justice Reviewing .com Contract

The Departments of Commerce and Justice are scrutinizing Verisign's bid for a six-year renewal of its contract to continue running the .com registry, the Internet's most popular generic top-level domain name.

Verisign said late last week in releasing its latest earnings results that the department may not finish its evaluation before the company's current contract expires on Nov. 30. Verisign said Commerce informed it earlier this month that both Commerce and the Justice Department are examining the agreement's "pricing terms." If Commerce doesn't approve the contract before it expires, Verisign's current contract will be extended for six months, Verisign President and CEO Jim Bidzos said. Despite this, Bidzos said he was confident the company's contract will get renewed. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the nonprofit group that manages the Internet's domain-name system, in June approved Verisign's contract to continue operating the .com registry, which is the database of all the second-level domains that have been registered under the top-level domain ".com".