Verisign and ICANN should reverse course on third-level .name domains

Verisign is discontinuing third-level .name registrations with ICANN approval. Registrants who have held names for decades face losing them, and the decision tests how much weight renewal promises carry.

The .name registry has allowed individuals to register names of the form firstname.lastname.name for decades. Verisign, which operates .name alongside .com, asked to stop supporting those registrations. ICANN approved the request.

About 22,000 third-level .name registrations exist. Verisign says most are not in use and cites limited registrar support and declining usage. The revenue from these names is negligible next to .com.

For registrants, the issue is not revenue. A person who has used an address for 20 years may have connected it to hundreds of accounts. Losing the domain means changing every one of those addresses, and any account that is missed can become unreachable. Some registrants have already paid renewals that extend years into the future.

There is also a security risk. If the underlying second-level name becomes available, someone else could register it and receive email meant for the former holder. That can expose account recovery flows and personal data.

The registrants' remedy is procedural: they have filed reconsideration requests with ICANN asking the board to reverse the approval. That process is now the main forum for deciding whether the discontinuation stands.

A middle path exists. Verisign could stop accepting new third-level .name registrations while grandfathering existing ones. That would preserve the expectations of current holders while ending the service over time.

The decision matters beyond .name. Registrants generally rely on the expectation that a renewed domain remains theirs. If a registry can retire a namespace with ICANN's approval, holders in other legacy spaces will watch closely.