LOS ANGELES - The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced the renewal of its .COM Registry Agreement (RA) with Verisign. This follows the closing of a Public Comment period regarding the renewal, during which time stakeholders had the opportunity to formally and publicly share their opinions and recommendations. All public comments were carefully considered by the ICANN org staff and Board prior to the decision to approve the proposed agreement, according to the official website of ICANN. 

The new .COM RA reflects ICANN's commitments to its mission to ensure the continued security, stability, and resilience of the Internet. For example, several provisions from recent amendments to the Base Generic Top-Level Domain Registry Agreement (Base gTLD RA) were adopted as part of the renewal. These important new obligations include:

• Domain Name System (DNS) Abuse mitigation requirements related to malware, botnets, phishing, pharming, and spam (when used as a delivery mechanism). These obligations will help protect Internet users from certain malicious activity using domain names.
• Providing domain name registration data over the Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP). RDAP is a replacement for the WHOIS protocol, offering more secure access to data, and support for internationalizing domain name registration data, among other improvements.

In addition, the new .COM RA adds additional contractual obligations to further align the agreement with the Base gTLD RA. These include the addition of the registry-level fixed fee, and the right for ICANN to adjust the registry fees owed to ICANN in accordance with inflation.

ICANN and Verisign also have agreed to amend the Letter of Intent. Updates include changes to reflect Verisign's support for a more accessible multilingual Internet.