Investors drove down the stock price of VeriSign last week, based on a report by a Piper Jaffray analyst that the "zone file" of .com, .net and .org names had decreased in size in October, indicating that more names had expired than new names had been registered. [--SNIP--] The confusion about the zone file contraction arose, said Wiener, from the ongoing expiration in the fourth quarter of a projected 1.5 million domain name registrations that had been distributed late last year in giveaway promotions. Domain name registrars and registration resellers had given away hundreds of thousands of names in the hopes that registrants would pay for renewal at the end of the first year. But only 2 to 3 percent of promotional registrants actually have been choosing to pay for their names, rather than the 13 or even 90 percent that some registrars projected would convert to paying-customer status.