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Verisign Plans to Revive SiteFinder Advertising 'Service'

Posted by michael on from the think-of-the-consumers dept.

kiddailey writes "Claiming that their own independent examination of their controversial redirection service has found 'no security or stability problems', and that 'Internet users consider the service a helpful tool to navigate the web', Verisign has announced that it will give a 30- to 60-day notice before resuming the SiteFinder 'feature' that it voluntarily shut-down a couple of weeks ago."

2 of 370 comments (clear)

  1. ICANN has options by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Interesting
    ICANN's decision to farm out the front-end of the .COM/.NET DNS (ie having independent registrars responsible for maintaining lists of their own customers) gives ICANN an option it didn't have a few years ago - it can have a second or third .COM/.NET DNS infrastructure set up, with the primary root controllers pointing at both Verisign's and the others.

    DNS queries would be taken at random from the three providers. The registrars would, instead of registering with just Verisign, register with all three. Any registrar that didn't would find its customers complaining about DNS resolving issues.

    And to prevent Verisign from trying to drop a spanner in the works by not reregistering the domains it controls, ICANN could introduce the changes slowly, having, say, two of the root servers pointing at the alternative providers at the beginning, with the others still pointing at Verisign's network. Verisign's customers, assuming Verisign tried to fight it, would get poor DNS service immediately, without it becoming unusable. Everyone else wouldn't. Verisign's Registrar end would thus lose customers fairly rapidly.

    Why would this benefit ICANN? Well, it's fairly obvious: by doing so, ICANN can easily simply suspend Verisign (or any other abusive DNS root operator) without negatively impacting the Internet. Right now, Verisign believes it can get away with what it's done because it has a monopoly on .COM/.NET, and has enough of the registrar market to be able to prevent a switch. ICANN cannot switch to an alternative DNS operator without the direct cooperation of Verisign, and Verisign has said in the past they wouldn't cooperate.

    If ICANN is serious, it needs to do something about Verisign's monopoly immediately. Because of the Registrar/Infrastructure split, it now has the capability of doing so. Rather than sending letters containing vague threats of action, it's time it actually did something.

    --
    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  2. The day it goes up again by Wolfier · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm ready to run a background wget that surfs a random URL 10 times a second.

    Please join me.