VeriSign and Go Daddy Increase Lobbying Spending

The two largest companies operating in the domain market began spending more money on lobbying their interests in 2010.

The figures were published by the publicationDomain Name Wirebased on public records provided by the U.S. Senate under the Lobbying Disclosure Act.

VeriSign spent $3.315 million on lobbying last year, up from $2.4 million in 2009. Go Daddy, which owns domain name registrar GoDaddy.com, spent $1.162 million in 2010, up from $0.7 million in 2009.

Issues Go Daddy lobbied on included anti-piracy issues, user privacy, and the operation of online pharmacies.

Go Daddy has been a strong advocate for shutting down these pharmacies and blocked 150,000 domains linked to online pharmacy scams last year.

Most other companies in the field, however, either kept their lobbying spending the same or reduced it.

Companies unrelated to the domain name business also spent money lobbying the federal government on domain name issues. For example, the Christian Coalition of America actively lobbied to ban the launch of the .XXX domain extension for pornographic websites.