VeriSign Responds To ICANN's SiteFinder Advisory

dmehus writes "VeriSign's Naming and Directory Services division has written to ICANN President and CEO Paul Twomey regarding the recent advisory concerning VeriSign's DNS wildcard redirection service. In the letter, VeriSign's Rusty Lewis says that they are open to independent and objective technical concerns expressed by various Internet bodies; they have formed their own "independent" panel of industry leading experts to produce its own, separate report; and they will not voluntarily suspend SiteFinder. It's a very terse response, and frankly, I'd have expected more from them. Slashdot readers are encouraged to visit ICANNWatch for in-depth, expert discussion on this and other issues."

Comments

Huh?

[mrpuffypants]

From the letter to ICANN:

As to your call for us to suspend the service, I would respectfully suggest that it would be premature to decide on any course of action until we first have had an opportunity to collect and review the available data.

Well, I think that the world would have appreciated the same level of consideration before the system was ever even implemented in the first place.

Re:Huh?

[McSpew]

Translation: We implemented something that may have broken large parts of the Internet, but we'll wait until everyone has given up on us fixing it before we decide whether to undo what we did.

By the time they decide if they really broke everything they broke, and whether they should temporarily suspend SiteFinder, everybody else will have routed around them.

BTW: Does anybody know what they're talking about when they claim that other TLDs have implemented something like SiteFinder?

Translation, for the doublespeak impaired

[RobertB-DC]

In case you are not a doubleplusgood duckspeaker, here is a helpful translation of Verisign's letter to ICANN.

Dear Paul:
Translation: Dear meddlesome twit:

This will respond to the ICANN Advisory concerning VeriSign's Deployment of DNS Wildcard Service dated 19 September 2003.
We're about to tell you where you can stick your "advisory".

In the footsteps of several other registries that have done the same, we recently deployed a wildcard in the .com and .net zones.
Verisign has no problem being just as sleazy and underhanded as any of our competitors.

This was done after many months of testing and analysis and in compliance with all applicable technical standards.
Marketing sees dollar signs, and legal says we can get away with it.

All indications are that users, important members of the internet community we all serve, are benefiting from the improved web navigation offered by Site Finder.
None of the lusers who installed "The Internet" on their computers has a clue that we've even done anything.

These results are consistent with the findings from the extensive research we performed.
They are, however, clicking the pretty buttons, just like we hoped they would.

We are, of course, very interested in any objective technical information ICANN may have received concerning the service and would welcome the opportunity to work with you to review such data. To that end, we have reached out to schedule meetings... of leading experts in the field.
Let's have a meeting. Then another. Then another. Then, we'll codify the new de facto "standard".

As to your call for us to suspend the service, I would respectfully suggest that it would be premature to decide on any course of action until we first have had an opportunity to collect and review the available data.
We're going to get our way, because we can, and there's nothing you can do about it. Weenie.

After completing an assessment of any operational impact of our wildcard implementation, we will take any appropriate steps necessary.
And if we don't get our way, we'll pay off anyone we need to.

I look forward to continuing to work with you on this issue.
Kiss our ass.

Best Regards,
See you in Hell,

Russell Lewis
Executive Vice President, General Manager
VeriSign Naming and Directory Services

Bound to happen eventually

[daeley]

We'll know if these "negotiations" fall apart if "www.icannwatch.org" suddenly displays SiteFinder.

Translated...

[Bull999999]

Dear Paul

After the extensive research of how IE directs bad names to MSN Search, we decided that we couldn't let the bastards at MS be only ones that makes money off of poor saps who can't type their URLs right.

We really don't give a rat's ass about what ICANN thinks but just to shut your whiney mouth off, I hires a review panel of leading experts in the field. They include Linux code reviewers from SCO, the guy who thought of domain parking for Register.COM, and the guy who invented One-Click shopping.

As to your call for us to suspend the service, I'd like to politely say "go fuck yourself" with the upmost respect ICANN's Chairman, Vint Cerf, and ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee, Steve Crocker. Crocker, now that's a funny name, just like ICANN.

If you send any more letters, I will personally wipe my ass with it.

Go to hell,

Russell Lewis
Executive Vice President, General Manager
All Your Typos Are Belong To Us, Inc.