Lawsuit alleges Verisign has maintained an illegal monopoly over the .com registry.
A California man has sued (pdf) Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) and ICANN, alleging that their agreements governing .com have allowed Verisign to maintain an illegal monopoly and charge excessive prices for .com domain names.
Plaintiff Jeff Kessler is the registrant of six .com domain names.
The lawsuit details the decades-long history of Verisign’s contract with ICANN for .com domain names and argues that Verisign coerced ICANN into giving Verisign good terms.
Kessler seeks to represent a nationwide class of people and businesses that have paid to renew .com domains since at least September 4, 2022. That nationwide class seeks injunctive relief. A separate California class seeks monetary damages and other relief under state law.
Among other things, the lawsuit asks the court to stop the defendants from continuing the alleged anticompetitive conduct and prevent enforcement of provisions that restrict ICANN’s ability to regulate .com wholesale pricing.
He is correct. Most people are clueless about that. And the corporations masquerading as governments simply do not care, because they are lawless criminals stealing as much as they can. The whole domain name setup was designed to be anti-competitive.
The simplest and most easily understood explanation is this: the monopolies act. The monopolies act states that ONE corporation cannot have a monopoly on anything. Everything must be open to competition. That can be for collecting taxes, domain registration, or for council rates, etc.
But having said all that, likely he will not win. That’s because the courts (all corporations too contracting for profit, and subject to the same monopolies act) are part of this massive scam and they will not set precedents leading to all those corporations’ demise.
Please have Jeff Kessler on your podcast, that would be an awesome show. Awesome he is taking action on the very few remaining no bid, perpetual monopolies that affect millions. Verisign with a 70-80% margin and raising rates again and again and with known back end dealings, etc.. While a win is unlikely as they are to powerful and locked into to many people running gov. we should do all we can to help get this case exposure and awareness. Kudos to Mr. Kessler and wish him luck.