The agreement settles a long-running dispute between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, and the most powerful company under its jurisdiction. The settlement comes at a time when ICANN is under attack from China, Iran and other countries that want more direct control over the domain-name system that guides traffic around the Internet.

“It really hits the reset button on the relationship between VeriSign and ICANN and allows everybody to get focussed on more important things, like security and stability and the globalization of the Internet,” VeriSign Senior Vice President Mark McLaughlin said in an interview.

ICANN President Paul Twomey said the settlement shows that issues involving the domain-name system are best resolved within ICANN, rather than through an international bureaucratic body.
Via ZeroPaid