Advocacy groups urge government to end VeriSign domain contract

The American Economic Liberties Project announced that it and a “coalition of allies” yesterday sent two separate letters to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and Department of Justice, respectively, urging them to end VeriSign’s “government-designated monopoly over domain registration” before an August 2 deadline to stop the automatic renewal of VeriSign’s “no-bid contract.” VeriSign’s “monopoly is responsible for rising costs of the most coveted website domains,” the agency said in a statement. Shares of VeriSign are down 87c to $178.23 in morning trading.