A bill sponsored by two Washington state Democrats (Brian Baird and Jay Inslee) will make its way in to the US House of Representatives aimed at auditing the controversial ICANN and putting a decision by the organization to give Verisign a monopoly on "wait listing" domains on hold.

An page from BuyDomains.com gives an explanation of the complaints of other accredited registrars, but the basic complaint is that Verisign is a government sponsored monopoly and that this is just a ploy to allow Verisign to collect $20-35/domain for "reservations" as opposed to the $6/domain it receives for actual registrations.

Based on the relative lack of value and the near-total lack of work involved in doing the registration system, it seems ridiculous for Verisign to charge other registrars this amount annually for adding an entry to a database, especially since there is no guarantee that the paying parties will receive the domain during the subscription period.

The Washington Post has a slightly more detailed article; however, searching on the House web site did not provide a pointer to the text of the proposed "Fair, Transparent, and Competitive Internet Naming Act of 2003," which also calls for a GAO inspection of ICANN.