Fuzzy Math From VeriSign CEO?
Remarks by VeriSign CEO Stratton Sclavos at the Tech Policy Summit in San Jose this week unsurprisingly rubbed Internet registrars the wrong way. Sclavos estimated that competitors like GoDaddy and Network Solutions spent about $15 million lobbying against his company's continued control of the lucrative .com Internet address.
But a spokeswoman for Network Solutions criticized Sclavos' math, saying her firm and GoDaddy, the only two registrars that spent money on lobbying efforts in 2006, doled out considerably less than his guess.
According to GoDaddy's lobbying disclosures filed with the secretary of the Senate, the company spent about $245,000 on outside consultants last year. The firm's in-house lobbying activity associated with staff salaries amounted to about $460,000. Network Solutions appropriated about $420,000 on consultants and spent no money in-house because the company does not have lobbyists on staff.
Meanwhile, Verisign's outside spending on consultants for 2006 was about $885,000, according to disclosures provided by Network Solutions. The company spent $398,435 in-house through June 2006 (no year end report was filed). It is conceivable that VeriSign spent twice as much throughout the year on in-house salaries related to lobbying, the Network Solutions official said.
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