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VeriSign and Other Registry Giants Blast ICANN
rhwalker22 writes: "VeriSign, ENIC, and Nominet UK today released a letter to the U.S. Commerce Dept. urging Uncle Sam to 'scale back the powers of the body that manages the Internet's global addressing system,' according to this report on washingtonpost.com. ICANN, of course, has its own take on the Registries' letter..."
So after they make a fortune because of the ICANN does business, they want to change it so they can rape another group of customers?
They are not the ones I would listen to for policy changes.
Which you'll only be able to examine after a long lawsuit, and you won't be able to copy or leak to anyone without a 10 day opportunity for injunction.
Judging from their financial records history at least....
What would the consequences be of Verisign, InterNIC, and the like addressing providers simply ignoring ICANN?
ICANN doesn't have physical control of any servers. They can legislate away but if the regulations they impose are so far fetched that nobody will impliment them, they've got no real power.
I don't think the USDoC would care that much, either, honestly.
Free clue to ICANN: When even spamming, fake-renewal-notice-spewing, domain-slamming scumbag registrars like Verislime aren't afraid to write the Commerce Department and call you scum, you've got problems. ;-)
As a starting point, I assert that ICANN's role should consist of two jobs and two jobs only:
.com/.net/.org.
- Making sure that IP addresses are assigned and allocated on a fair and equitable basis and in conformity with demands of the the packet routing systems of the Internet.
- Making sure that the ICANN/NTIA root zone is expanded on a basis that is fair and equitable to everyone, that the root zone file is properly maintained and disseminated, and that its set of root servers are operated by persons and entities that have the proper skills, resources, and obligations.
We have plenty of national legislatures and treaty organizations that can handle those who claim that their commercial rights trump other rights.
It is an open question, and one that has never been debated, much less agreed upon by those affected, whether ICANN should have an additional role to act as a consumer protection body to protect those who due to historical circumstances are locked into
Thousands of slashdot readers spontaneously combust, unable to pick a side involving an underhanded, unscrupulous entity and... an underhanded, unscrupulous entity.
;-)
I'd just like to state that there were never such debates back when we were all using Gopher.
Heh heh, so ICANN and VeriSign are duking it out. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." The problem is, what if they're both your enemy? Then who's your friend?
Which brings to mind another aphorism. "When elephants fight, it's the grass that gets trampled."
Consider this quote from the article: VeriSign runs dot-com, dot-net and dot-org under agreements with ICANN that prevent VeriSign from raising the wholesale price of the addresses it sells ($6), or substantially changing the way it runs the domains.
At VeriSign, domain names are six bucks wholesale; thirty-five bucks retail. This makes the bottled-water business look positively low-margin. The actual cost of service provided by VeriSign (less overhead for executive salaries, Aereon chairs, and Napoleonesque offices) is less than a dime. The markup on domain name registration is already expressed in scientific notation. But of course, even when you have a monopoly (as VeriSign has), everything is never quite enough.
The history of VeriSign (and its predecessor, Network Solutions) and of ICANN is a textbook story of the effects of greed and commercial selfishness vs. political and parochial power-hunger upon the internet. Check it out yourself. If you want to see the future of the net, you need only take a look at its past.
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Enter VeriSign, a corporate giant, and ICANN, a nonprofit service that thinks it is a private -- and profitable -- corporation.
VeriSign (shouting offstage): Hey government, ICANN is taking our business!
ICANN: But you are just trying to racketeer and price gouge.
VeriSign: That's not the point. You are racketeering and we want more of the pie. Er, you are outside your jurisdiction on those matters, and are avoiding the issue.
ICANN: But we filter our money through IANA and other profitable corporations, I mean, nonprofit public benefit groups.
Two small groups, Nominet and DENIC, enter stage right.
Nominet and DENIC: But what about us? We want to work closely with VeriSign because then we can get all the names that aren't taken with .com, .net, and .org. If VeriSign can price gouge, we should be able to also.
VeriSign: You guys all wanna step into another room and we can discuss this rationally?
all step into dimly-light back room, talking. Also in the room is a demonic figure in red, with horns, a tail, and a pitchfork. All of them laugh, join hands, and become a New Entity.
New Entity: We have reached an agreement. We are now VeriSign-Nominet-ICANN-DENIC, or VeriSNIDE for short. Our new registration fee is $15000 per domain, or highest bid. Because we are Internet based, we will no longer report to any government or public entity. We will do all business from our fleet of personal yachts around the world. Please see our Lawyers and Accountants on the way out.
exit stage left.
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Okay, so it won't be a blockbuster play, but it sure seems like the entire corporate world is following this model.
frob.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Why does the US feel that it should own the Internet?
.com domains, but their corporate site will be at .fr. Similar for Japan, Germany, Britain, Canada, Australia, and pretty much every company in the world. Only the US, with a virtually nonexistent .us domain, has all its companies have .com domains.
Countries have different laws. That's a fact, and a good thing; I don't think anybody wants that Hague treaty that lets people sue Swedish porn producers in Saudi Arabia, for example. So having global domains only invites problems.
A French's company may have
What we really need to do is eliminate the three-letter TLD, and have every single domain name end in a country code. Then. as part of getting a domain, the owner agrees to abide by the laws of the country controlling the domain, and no other laws.
Whether ICANN exists or not, the US government tries to enforce its laws on the whole of the Internet. By more clearly enforcing existing political boundaries on the Web, all sorts of disputes can be resolved and avoided.