Verisign Vice President and Associate General Counsel at Verisign Kirk Salzmann made point in on the ongoing battle for a new gTLD .WEB. As you know, this domain aroused perhaps the greatest interest at the first stage of the new domains program. As a result, the auction for the right to manage it was won by the unknown company Nu Dot Co, paying a huge $135 million.
It soon became clear that her participation in the auction was financed by Verisign, to which Nu Dot Co transferred the rights to manage the domain zone. Since then, battles have continued around .WEB. The most ardent opponents of the auction results were the Donuts and Afilias, which also laid claim to the domain. Since then, the Donuts company has changed its name to Identity Digital and has withdrawn from the fight, but the Altanova, which inherited the rights to claim .WEB from Afilias, is not giving up and is initiating a second procedure for an independent review of the decision of the ICANN, which approved the results of the auction.
All this constantly delays the launch of the .WEB domain. In this regard, Kirk Salzmann asks a reasonable question: who can benefit from this situation? He notes that, apparently, Altanova's only area of activity is litigation over the .WEB. At the same time, its expenses for organizing the first independent review procedure amounted to about $10 million - and the launch of the second procedure will probably cost a similar amount. Where does the company get this money from?
Kirk Salzmann hints quite clearly that Identity Digital may be behind the support of Altanova and its efforts. The companies (then Donuts and Afilias) presented a united front against Verisign immediately after the auction and are likely to remain united today. For Altanova, this fight is a chance to get control of a promising domain or - perhaps - a hefty payout from Verisign to finally back down. As for Identity Digital, it manages the largest portfolio of new generic top-level domains, and it may benefit from delaying the emergence of a serious competitor to its domain extensions for as long as possible.
