.net vote stalls

June 2005

A controversial vote to give VeriSign control of the .net registry for the next six years has stalled.

A special meeting of the ICANN Board on Wednesday - the second in a month, both with .net top of the agenda - failed to reach agreement after a number of members abstained and the necessary quorum to pass a resolution wasn't reached.

The vote, called for by Hagen Hultzsch and seconded by chairman Vint Cerf, sought the re-selection of VeriSign in running .net. The duo along with a further three Board members voted in favour but two voted against and four abstained. A further four were not present.

Under ICANN bylaws a majority of Board members should be present for the meeting to be legitimate and a majority of those present need to vote in favour for a resolution to be carried. In this case, five were in favour but six were against or abstained.

The vote failure comes after a hotly contested process of selection for a new .net registry owner. As we exclusively revealed last month, ICANN had made a large number of changes to the public consultation process, all of which favoured VeriSign. The company chosen by ICANN to carry out the evaluation, Telcordia, also has close ties with VeriSign.