The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers recently announced a proposal intended to end a dispute with VeriSign, the company that administers the .com registry. The deal is reportedly a $1.5 billion "giveaway" that proposes to permanently transfer important public infrastructure to VeriSign, lock in domain name registration price increases for the next seven years, allow VeriSign to expand its natural monopoly and grant the company permanent control of the .com database. Blog