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Verisign Sues ICANN Over SiteFinder
camusflage writes "Yahoo's running a story about VeriSign suing ICANN for holding up Sitefinder. Choice quote from VeriSign: 'This brazen attempt by ICANN to assume 'regulatory power' over VeriSign's business is a serious abuse of ICANN's technical coordination function.'"
In Corporate America, Verisign sues ICANN!
Nice and misleading explanation right there. We're talking about a 'search engine' that impacts any internet application querying a non-existent domain. Once again, the "THE INTERNET IS ONLY THE WEB" mindset that low-grade tech journalism seems to be stuck in is preventing people from realizing the destructive nature of something as profound as adding a wildcard to major TLDs.
Errmm... Last I checked, regulating internet infrastructure with regards to assigned names and numbers is ICANN's job. Anything less than a "brazen attempt" and they would be failing at enforcing the RFCs and other regulations they've been entrusted to enforce. Since when do Verisign's business interests trump this?
At least they respond to complains with action, instead of stonewalling anyone who disagrees with them, as Verisign so eagerly did when the SiteFinder controversy first broke.
Screw Verisign. I've seen plenty of companies with brazen, my-way-or-the-highway attitudes, but this one is entrusted with managing a major international public resource, and have been caught with their pants down abusing that trust. To whine like this is a sign of just how out of step Verisign really is. Frankly, they deserve to have all authority over the root servers taken away from them before they do more harm in their quest for profits.
Hello Kettle, I'm Pot. Would you like to step inside my glass house?
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
That Verisign's site finder is a brazen abuse of their power as a service provider.
It's a cheap ploy to get billions of hits to a VeriSign controlled page.
I have 0 respect for Verisign...they have long established they will discard customer concern for any perceived increase in money.
clifgriffin > blog
ICANN has made numerous unpopular decisions throughout its corporate life. So has VeriSign. This is truly a battle of two evils. Which one is the lesser evil, in your opinion?
i gn.complaint .p1of2.022604.pdf
i nt .p2of2.022604.pdf
In my own personal view, I do hope ICANN emerges from this lawsuit as the "victor". If VeriSign were to win its request for an injunction against ICANN, and on the broader claim that ICANN "unlawfully transformed itself from a technical coordination body to the de-facto Internet regulator," I feel it would have far-reaching implications for all of us. It would effectively muzzle ICANN and give VeriSign free reign to do as it pleases with the Internet -- at least until a legislative change was made, such as making ICANN into a government regulatory agency similar to the FCC. Mind you, that might be a good thing. It might force the Bush administration's conservative laissez-faire approach to Internet governance to get a dramatic overhaul and become more regulatory. Another plus to ICANN becoming a taxpayer-funded government regulatory body, it could keep its acronym and be enshrined into law as the Internet Commission for Assigned Names and Numbers. Or, it could become the Internet Naming and Numbering Agency -- or INNA.
Nonetheless, this will be a bitter battle.
It also has high stakes for VeriSign. If VeriSign is unsuccessful, it will almost certainly ensure that the dot-net gTLD is redelegated to a new operator later this year.
My take,
Doug
P.S. Copies of the complaint:
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/veris
and
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/verisign.compla
Doug Mehus http://doug.mehus.info/
I'm utterly dumbfounded! These are two of the internet's finest and most reputable entities! How can either be involved in any kind of abuse or malpractice? There must be some kind of mistake...
I seem to remember the entire reason ICANN was established was to remove power from Verisign because they'd proven themselves unable to handle responsibility.
Huh? Oh. You want the article next door. Yeah, having two MS articles in one day will do that to ya.
What if other companies did similar things? What if companies involved with the stock market used their insider info to give them a step-up when it comes to which stocks to buy and sell? Yeah, its a bad idea. Same here.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Hello happiness, I think its time to switch.
because you are preventing us from being a monopoly! And that is sooooo unfair to us!
We have the big ugly viscous Microsoft-like villains vs. the slothlike, inefficient quasi-government organization...
:-/
My bets are on the lawyers...with 100 to 1 against the people...
...in bed
Really - this is the kind of argument I would expect from a spammer that doesn't want to be restricted in their ability to serve unwanted ads to increasingly frustrated recipients.
... addToListOfEvilCompanies("Verisign");
Oh, wait. I get spam from Verisign (and their subsidiaries) all the time.
From the article:
"Working the ICANN process is like being nibbled to death by ducks," said Tom Galvin, VeriSign's vice president for government relations. "It takes forever, it doesn't make sense, and in the end we're still dead in the water."
Yeah. Nibbled to death by ducks. That sounds good.
Mallard Ducks.
Well, we can dream, at least...
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
In all likelihood, considering recent political restructuring at ICANN, they will probably fold to Verisign, who essentially dictate to ICANN right now. Not a troll, not flamebait, simply true.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Take away their privilege (not right) to be a domain registrar.
What most people see is that this is just an extended version of IE's built in search that throws you to MicroSoft's search engine (which sucks), so they don't see the implications for all the REAL internet applications that don't run through a web browser.
"Straddling the sword of technology..."
I think this whole Verisign/ICANN thing, perhaps better than most recent examples of high-profile disputes in the tech industry, illustrates what a fundamental disconnection there is between the computer sophisticates and average, well-educated newspaper readers.
Even in this article, which is reasonably technically sophisticated, Verisign's SiteFinder is almost invariably described in terms which suggest it was just a helpful service for lost souls (people who'd typed a wrong URL) instead of being recognized for what it is, an aggressive land grab and a ridiculous abuse of monopoly power.
It's not like newspapers are in VeriSign's pockets or anything. Why is that so few of them seem to understand how bad what VeriSign did is?
Glad to see that the early hooting isn't only anti-VeriSign. People ought to consider that ICANN has been burying everything registries want to do in piles of bureaucracy, while trying to grab more and more money and power. ICANN should be reformed and stuck to technical operational issues rather than playing footsie with international bureaucrats. Think of all the nonsense that would come from the ITU/U.N. getting its mitts on "Internet governance," which is being discussed in Geneva today and tomorrow. VeriSign is no angel, but if it can take ICANN down a notch, I'm for it.
This sort of problem could have been forseen. Even though I hated their Sitefinder feature, they have a point. Since when does ICANN have the power to tell a business or person what they can or can't put on their page? It just so happens that this business is Verisign, who also runs part of the internet.
This is where the problem is. Why is a business running these domain names? That seems like a conflict of interest to me. There needs to be non business regulatory commitees that run it. The issue certainly can't be finding money to do it.
Even though its a little annoying that Verisign wants to show their sitefinder, as a business, they have every right to do it.
This discussion reminds me of something on slashdot a while ago that I can't find that was something like "10 common misconceptions about the internet". The whole point was that the internet is just a network of computers, its that simple. This simplicity will vanish before our eyes if we have businesses running it.
This may be a dumb question....but why do we need Verisign? I know they control some of the root servers, but why them? Couldn't the internet as a whole (if it could somehow come to an agreement), give those root servers to somebody else? The list of root servers is static. If everybody just changed the list all at once, their servers would suddenly become quiet and this would be a non-issue.
Of course, I realize that doing that would not be so straightforward, but such an effort would send a message...to Verisign and to anybody else that would try this kind of crap. Self-healing network, heal thyself!
teeker
Verisign: I can ICANN: U can't
Free XBox, PS2
At what point does it make sense to start editting Verisign.com out of the internet? The basic ploy here seems to be to ride rough-shod over the concerns of the technical users and administrators who maintain the 'net, in the hopes that uneducated consumers will ignore the issue.
It seems to me that the thousands of sysadmins, ISP admins and so forth who read this site and feel the pain of Verisign's greed have an option here - alter our local DNS registries to point www.verisign.com etc to 127.0.0.1. Given enough people doing this and their business will start to feel the pain.
It would be a fine twist to this whole mess, and perhaps drive home to the PHB's at Verisign exactly how annoyed this makes those of us who understand the ramifications of their actions.
Looking for a Rails developer in Chapel Hill?
Very often, when anyone tries to access a now non-existant web page, the ISP owning the relevant server will forward you to one of their home pages. Or maybe a web domain speculator will buy up a domain name, and use that to forward you to their search engine. Verisign could argue they're doing something similar. Obviously it's wrong, but it's more or less what other people are doing.
ICANN: Turn of your Sitefinder, or we'll give .com to someone else. And you'll be left as nothing but a dead registrar...
Verisign: ICAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANN!
Doesn't ICANN hold SOME authority over VeriSign about DNS? Can't ICANN just "pull the plug" and tell VeriSign to go take a hike while they find someone more competent to take care of the root DNS servers? I mean, this is getting more or less ridiculous and as far as I understand it, would severely hamper several spam-fighting techniques used, possibly other things as well.
Besides, isn't it possible to get rid of the whole root DNS server idea in the first place? The attack on the root servers a few months ago didn't do much damage but it made clear that IF the root server went down ( granted, for extended periods... ) that the internet would be flat on it's arse unless we started using IP adresses. ( Which doesn't solve the problem because of absolute linking used on some websites... Though it would allow other uses again like FTP, SSH, etcetera. ) So why not a root DNS p2p network then? Still the root idea as used for DNS now, but instead of querying a set of dedicated root servers, DNS servers lower in the hierachy would query a root p2p network instead. Give ISPs a server with access to the network, same thing for registrars & co and someone decides to be a prick with DNS records, have ICANN throw them off be severing all communications with the other party's DNS servers.
Hate me!
I must be missing something... since when did SCO take over Verisign ? Ain't it funny - I am suing you for preventing me from violating the specs that my job is built on in the first place. And on top of it, I [verisign] got the RFID database to handle too (check this week's news). Bruahahah !! It's got to be Darl.
--- "I didn't think anyone would understand it" -Prof. Bob Muller
There's absolutely nothing wrong with Verisign putting up their Sitefinder search engine. What ICANN had an issue with is the mismanagement of the DNS entries. If I want sitefinder, I'll go to www.sitefinder.com. If I go to www.stiefinder.com, I want a "host/domain not found" error, not a search engine.
Can we have a say please?
Oh, I'm sorry. I guess not.
its patched to block their bullshit site. Besides, if verislime gets sitefinder back up, i am sure the script kiddies will GLEEFULLY dos the hell out of that bitch. (hint hint)
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
Seriously. Why is Verisign still entrusted with the root servers for any top level domains.
They have abused their position, they are completely untrustworthy, and they are now suing the very body that (I would assume) allowed them to have this power in the first place.
I want Verisign's power of DNS revoked: Now. What is the inherent barrier? Why are they still allowed to intentionally fuck over the globe?
Does no one have the revoking power? Is inertia on their side? What is going on that gives them this power?
Verisign abuses its power as a domain registry to get mistyped host names.. but any registry could do that now. What if multiple registries did that? Web browsers would become all confused as to which DNS entry is right?
... I'd like you to meet my friend Mr. Kettle. I understand the two of you have a few things in common....
I also saw the article at CNET
"Today VERISIGN announced it will be suing ICANN for doing their job and preventing VERISIGN from illegally controlling and redirecting internet traffic, it has no legal right to, to their own product."
Methinks this would be somewhat similar to the US Government making all roads not privately owned lead to a government business.
I know, that sounds REALLY stupid - the government would NEVER do that. It's moronic to even think of something like that - but, essentially, is that not exactly what Verisign tried to do?
This also stinks of anti-competative monopolistic activity - as there are other 'site-finding' services out there. Such as Google, AltaVista, etc al... Yet Verisign would be the _only_ company able to perform a service utilizing this method - as they would be illegally tapping into property they do not own - unregistered domain names.
Stupid ICANN, what were they thinking! They act like they have "responsibility for Internet Protocol (IP) address space allocation, protocol identifier assignment, generic (gTLD) and country code (ccTLD) Top-Level Domain name system management, and root server system management functions."
The "power of audacity" is the order of the day in these Looking Glass times. When an individual person grabs the debate with outrageous claims, it's chutzpa - they can be ignored, jailed, and sometimes staked through the heart. But in a public environment with no real boundaries, millions of bloodthirsty lawyers on bottomless expense accounts, and some inane requirement for all issues to have "balance" between two untenable (and often contrived) extremes, unaccountable (and disaudited) corporations can get what they want by blowing over the top, and agreeing to split the difference, arriving squarely on target. And when they oppose people who merely defend reasonable positions closer to the middle than some self-selected extreme for balance, they win. Every time. Welcome to the abyss.
"They say ev'rything can be replaced,
Yet ev'ry distance is not near.
So I remember ev'ry face
Of ev'ry man who put me here.
I see my light come shining
From the west unto the east.
Any day now, any day now,
I shall be released."
- Bob Dylan, "I Shall Be Released"
--
make install -not war
In Soviet Russia Verisign sues ICANN.
Having said that, I don't think making it a gov't institution would solve anything. There have been many situations where gov't regulation has helped us, but when has the gov't taken over a previously private role and done a better job?
Although the free market can't solve every problem, this seems like a case where elegant legislation might make the difference. Now, Verisign has a monopoly on .com domain registration. But why should they? Shouldn't that position be open for bidding? Or have term limits? If a company only has a short window of time in which it controls domain registration, or if there are repercussions for abusing its power, that company will likely be cautious about enacting drastic infrastructure changes of the type Verisign is implementing.
(By the way, people often use the $ as a derogatory marker for an entity they don't like, such as Micro$oft or the Church of $cientology, so why not Veri$ign as well?)
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
[Pot, to kettle}: You're black!
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
"We have prepared a response to verisign."
"*ahem* Fuck you."
"You may direct your questions towards the wall behind me."
we have a concerted effort on the part of all geeks everywhere to wget or otherwise download as many non-existant domains under their TLD as possible. We will proceed to do this once a week until sitefinder is destroyed for good!
They're doing their job from permitting monopolies in the domain name business from abusing their granted privledges. Verisign should have their privledges revoked, GoDaddy and a handfull of others are way better as far as price and morals go than Verisign. When I purchase my domains, I *NEVER* to through Verisign, I instead use GoDaddy. Cheap, powerful, and less crap. Verisign is just mad because they want everyone to see their stupid search site, which if this continues will probably have lots o' spyware on it, bombarding the user with gator and its friends.
Bored? Why not join a decent mess
The cool thing about site finder was it kept the URL you typed in the URL bar when you use Microsoft Internet explorer.
When I typed in a bad domain name, Microsoft would redirect and change the URL to msn.com, which annoys me since the spelling mistake was pretty minor, only 1 or 2 letters needed to be corrected instead of retyping the entire URL back into the address bar.
Of course this is really a browser problem, and it's Microsoft's fault.
Mr. Sclavos,
I was dismayed to hear that Verisign has launched a lawsuit against ICANN over the termination of the Sitefinder service.
I realise that I am only one person, but hopefully you will receive sufficient numbers of messages in similar vein that you will reconsider this action. It can have only one outcome, and this will not be good for Verisign or its shareholders.
ICANN is a regulatory body specifically tasked with ensuring that the cooperative standards which embody the Internet are administered for the common good.
Verisign, being in a unique position of trust, introduced a service that rendered the entire domain name mechanism broken.
Although the service provided may possibly have been useful for web users, the Internet is most emphatically not just the web. By ensuring that nonexistent domain name lookups succeeded, Verisign circumvented the error handling provisions of a large number of IP-based software products.
You will have noticed at the time that the immediate response from many ISPs was to immediately place local detection and blocking of Sitefinder, in order to restore correct functionality to these applications in accordance with accepted practice. This caused a considerable amount of effort and cost to the businesses concerned, and is therefore a legitimate target for regulation, and the regulatory body in question was the ICANN.
To attempt to sue a regulatory body for doing its job correctly and effectively is, I am afraid, unlikely to show Verisign in a good light.
Again, I urge you to reconsider this action.
Yours,
Sean Ellis
Software Developer
--------
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
"Working the ICANN process is like being nibbled to death by ducks," said Tom Galvin, VeriSign's vice president for government relations. "It takes forever, it doesn't make sense, and in the end we're still dead in the water."
Sounds like the last domain transfer I did away from Versign.
Obviously some of you are still buying from them.
Stop.
Find another registrar, find a new CA, do anything you have to do to stop giving them money.
Not that ICANN isn't just a conglomerate of evil corporations these days, but at least in this case they acted purely on the will of the public.
(Posted from MSIE)
"Working the ICANN process is like being nibbled to death by ducks," said Tom Galvin, VeriSign's vice president for government relations. "It takes forever, it doesn't make sense, and in the end we're still dead in the water."
I wonder if Tom Galvin and Darl spend late nights together working on clever metaphors to use in press releases related to their lawsuits...
"To lead the people, you must walk behind them"
"Since when does ICANN have the power to tell a business or person what they can or can't put on their page?"
ICANN isn't claiming any such thing; all they're saying is you must administer DNS to the RFC specifications.
In fact, my guess is that ICANN doesn't care at all about siteminder.
Is it really that hard to understand?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
But, I am busy throwing rocks at the moment.
I would much prefer if Verisign's management were infested with African parasites of various sorts. Guinea worms would be a good start.
Verisign hijacked people's computers because they typed invalid names, and "helped" them by advertising themselves while disabling computers that depended on the standard that Verisign unilaterally and capriciously broke. Verisign then has the gall to sue the organization that forced them to obey their previously agreed-upon standards. Isn't this like Nixon suing the Watergate special prosecutor for preventing him from "modifying" the government from a variant of a representative democracy to a dictatorship? After all, the prosecutor made him obey the law and wait through a long, drawn-out process known as legislation. I guess it would have been much easier and quicker to allow the President to do what he wants without waiting for Congress to get around and pass a law, right?
Hello, Verisign, welcome to my foes list, you useless, talentless a**holes... Oh wait, you were there already, after you enabled the Charlie-Fox known as SiteFinder. My bad.
I'm just shocked, I had to read this again because it is truly stunning, I feel like I've fallen into a parallel universe where Verisign has an innate right to the monopoly they've been granted by the organization they're suing. Heaven forbid that the body created to regulate internet domain name serving actually regulates it! This has to be the most spectacular example of biting the hand that feeds you that I've ever seen. They'd have no business interest if ICANN hadn't handed it to them on a silver platter.
Verisign should lose all control & responsibility of any TLDs for this, it's just amazing that they could attempt to undermine internet infrastructure like this and then brazenly turn around and sue the regulators.
They have no shame, it's time to farm TLD administration out to people who are at least slightly rational.
"Guess the foot is on the other hand now, Kramer"
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
slashdotters maintain a domain name. I'll bet good money that more than half of that is through Networksolutions. So why not use our consumer power to say "No" to sitefinder.
I have. I sent a nasty-gram laying out why I think sitefinder is a bad idea. My threat was to move my domains to a different registrar. Hell little o'l me has four domains with networksolutions that's a decent bit of change they'll miss in the next two years.
I don't suppose ICANN can just allow them to go ahead with sitefinder and simulaniously terminate their contract to host the registrys?
.org is beyond their slimy reach for the moment.
That's wishfull thinking but it would still be nice. I'm glad my
to put it bluntly
a perpetual contract
now they paobally broke said contract with sitefinder but ianal and icann don't wan't to push it
I'm forming the "Internet Corporation for Unassigned Names and Numbers", thereby gaining world dominance.
May I present: theroot.ofallevil.com
Joining the ranks of: thesource.ofallevil.com
I love DNS...
Blockwars: multiplayer, head to head, free tetris like game
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
before ICANN realizes Verisign is more or less creating "virtual" sites or addresses and Verisign owes ICANN what they are due [for each one]?
Unfortunately, ICANN has been about as strong as weak toilet paper when it comes to enforcing the rules (e.g., forcing registrars to ensure the registry information is correct) so I don't think we'll see anything come out of this one [even though they stand to gain [financially] from it].
How mean can you get? Verisign wants to punish anyone who makes a mistake with their typing.
Urantian -- and proud of it!
The solution is to alter a DNS server so it examines the results it gets back from its parents, and if it's a BS Verisign auto-search response, tell the requestor that the domain doesn't exist. Then we all start running and/or pointing to a DNS server that runs this new & improved DNS server, and all is good.
Be sure to make the change modular so we can remove it when Verisign pulls their head out.
Make that ICUNN. But I'm still gaining world dominance.
In Sov...er...Capitalist America, Verisign sues ICANN for improper actions and abuse of power!
I hate verisign..... but we are forced to use them. Totally unfair.. and thouands of developers will now have to recode and take into account the changes that Verisign is strong arming. To the CFO..... he just wants to see the money, he probably does not even use the internet.
Ill I have to say is: Verisign is GAY!
I, on the other hand, like MS better than Verisign.
If I don't want to use IE, I don't have to. I am not forced to use their product or to see their ads if I choose differently.
Having a poor browser does not break any other Internet applications. This does.
There's no sig like this sig anywhere near this sig, so this must be the sig.
Verisign is doing a good job with DNS right now (more or less, the internet works for people). Why change it unless they are unfit to do their job?
I may not know all of their crimes and injustices against people, what I do know is that if they do manage to implement this kind of BS, it'll get blocked as people need those wildcards for their systems to function. If they continue to abuse the fact that people point their DNS servers to Verisigns root servers, they won't be pointing there for very long because someone is going to creat an alternative. That's something you can't legislate or really even tell people they can or can't do.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
What if Social security decide to open a brokerage business for retirement, and decide that they would sell their services through the list of names and SS# that they have. SS is empowered to use that data only in certain ways - use of it to sell their own products is a misuse of the data, which isn't theirs in the first place, but the gov'ts. They can't use data obtained legally for one purpose for another purpose without gaining permission to do so.
Verisign has behaved similarly. They made SiteFinder (which is fine) but then broke an agreed-upon standard (under which they were given authority to act in the first place) to make it run while usurping common property (the namespace of misspelled sites) as their own. They did not ask for permission to use unused namespace to redirect to SF - they did it on their own. The namespace domain was never Verisign's to use - they were given authority over but only insofar as to execute their job. They attempted to use communal property for their sole use, and are now suing because they were prevented from doing so and were unwilling to concede what was necessary to gain permission to use it.
I can't use my employers' resources for a business of my own. Verisign should be similarly restrained.
Actually sitefinder.com is now registered to a searchstation.com. Kind of appropriate really Cheers VikingBrad
1) Considering like a huge majority of sites designers never bother debugging their sites for any other browser, the messed up way IE interprets many sites is the way the designers intended them to be viewed. Considering that IE or browsers that disguise themselves as IE has more than 90% of the browser traffic, so to most debugging their site on other browsers seems pointless.
2) At work I'm stuck with whatever is installed on my work station. Not everyone works somewhere they get to install whatever software they want on your workstations.
When SiteFinder DOES go back up.
"Which invalid random URL do you want to visit the next millisecond?"
I don't think this is a browser problem ... I don't think this is Microsoft's problem.
... (lack of English) here. This is exactly how Verisign is hijacking what it doesn't own.
...) ALL THE NON-EXISTENT .COM and .NET DOMAINS.
/., but what Verisign is trying to pull of here, is pissing me off beyond (fill in yourself). What Microsoft is doing with Internet Explorer is really nothing compared to this ...
You're hitting the nail on the
In the case of Internet Explorer: when you type in a wronf URL, the browser cannot find it and decides to redirect you.
I dunno if you fully understand the scope of what's going here. This is so f*king wrong.
Apart from the obvious EXTREMELY SERIOUS technical issues, what bothers me most is that Verisign is in this way actually STEALING ( and make money on them through ad's
Well, I hardly ever post on
Ever tried OpenNIC ?
And general society is pig-ignorant when it comes to computers and technology. A reasonable percentage can do the obvious things with technology that corporations have spent billions making as easy as plug and play, but by and large they remain totally ignorant when it comes to even the most basic explanations of how technology works.
Furthermore, there's a significant number of people who hold the notion that knowing "how things work" somehow makes you some kind of commoner or blue collar schmuck, and unfortunately many of these people are in high-visibility leadership positions and they pass these attitudes down to their followers, spreading the misguided notion that ignorance of technology -- ANY technology -- somehow is evidence of your superior social or economic standing.
So I actually can't blame newspapers, other than that they're just reflecting the general ignorance of the general population (plus all the usual problems with in-depth facts and information gathering daily news media have).
I think it's up to us or some geek advocacy group to work the PR hard on this so that the news media gets a better idea of what's actually happening and how it hurts the internet. We know that Verisign will be more than willing to work THEIR PR resources to get their side of the story out.
I've setup a petition:/ petition.ht ml
http://www.petitiononline.com/VSvI2004
(please forgive possible quirks as I'm not english native)
Dynamic configuration COULD be designed. Every router acting in its own best interest, reassigning ips on the fly as networks come and go...
Much easier to suggest than implement. Worse on a public internet where you have to deal with script kiddies who will declare their own networks of several billion computers from time to time just to mess everyone else up.
Peter Falk used to use that quote when describing what it was like being chased by his Columbo character. Eric Severide used it referring to TV execs.
Gahh, better in html: ICANN revoke VeriSign Petition
How many domains are owned/controlled by slashdot readers? Don't like Verisign? Transfer your domain(s) to an alternate registrar. Perhaps that giant sucking sound will get their attention (or if the past is any judge...perhaps it won't).
Even without their patently monopolistic behaviour, I've dumped them as a service provider because of their gross incompetence each and every time I've been forced to interact with them.
YMMV...
Doc: You know what they say: People in glass houses sink sh... sh... sh... ships.
Rocco: I got to buy you a proverb book or something, because this mix 'n' match shit's got to go.
Doc: What?
Connor MacManus: Well, a penny saved is worth two in the bush, isn't it?
Murphy MacManus: And don't cross the road if you can't get out of the kitchen.
-- The Boondock Saints
Staying away IE for me is harder than it seems for the following reasons:
1) What happens if your company's web portal uses Active X controls, such as Citrix Metaframe server. This is almost a standard for remote access for large enterprises.
2) Majority of plug-ins are designed for IE
3) There exists many internet sites that are broken. This is because people have designed their sites to render on IE, so people write broken code to run on a broken browser.
4) I don't have admin or power user privillages on computers I use at work, and it is easier for me to use IE than go through a whole chain of people to get another browser installed.
I'm merely saying my opinion, that Verisign site finder is a blessing to many people like myself. There is no need to try to make it seem like I know nothing about alternative browsers. I use alternative browsers at home, but occasionally I'm forced to use IE and in all it's buggyness and annoyances, and site finder makes it better.
This is a classic mismatch. This is basically a fixed administrative contract that they acquired, where they sell names and administer a database. These idiots don't understand this and want to "grow the business". Well they can't do that by abusing the monopoly granted them by fucking with their administrative responsibilities. Just do the damned job, if you have ideas for other businesses fine, but don't dick with the core function that it's your DUTY to administer in the public interest as permitted by congress.
.com domains. That's their mandate, to administer what is basically a public service. They don't seem to understand that congress & everyone else just wants them to perform this fixed funtion and if they dick with it someone else will be found to do it better without the B.S.
They don't seem to understand that they're only supposed to sell and administed a bunch of
I still can't figure out why they're so spectacularly misguided as to think that this service responsibility gives them the unilateral right to screw with the World's internet infrastructure, and sue the only regulatory body in place to stop their shenanigans.
Fro everybody that has to manage computers for people who think this is a good thing, let it go completely. If you're using domain-lookup for anti-spoofing of email addresses, let the email through (for those users). Let the chaos ensue as the end-users actually get what they ask for.
Then there's the solution proposed before, to totally DDOS the system with http://www.dev_random_cleaned.com/ and see the Verisign servers go down in smoke.
(I'd say the same about open-source software. Twenty-four hours of no open-source on the network being run, and see the chaos. See those sendmail deployments shut down, those BIND deployments go down, all Apache sites go down. Make sure you prepared your popcorn ahead of time, you may not be able to build fires in the ensuing entertainment.)
Doing the Right Thing should not be preempted by making a buck.
Screw Verisign
No thanks. I my catch something.
Frankly, they deserve to have all authority over the root servers taken away from them before they do more harm in their quest for profits.
Now that has substance! This company sux to high heaven and they keep pulling this crap. I only fear that Congress will assign someone even worse and more corrupt if that happened.
You some good points and I the reader thank you.
Stuff that matters.
Its clear that Verisign is irresponsible and can be expected to keep trying to abuse its position running the GTLD servers for .com and .net.
As I understand it, ICANN delegated this role to Verisign, so ICANN ought to be able to take it away.
Can anyone explain the terms of the current delegation? Is there are contract that will expire in a few years? Did Verisign somehow acquire permanant rights?
Let's just replace DNS with something similar and tell Verisign they can't play.
to put it bluntly
a perpetual contract
Verisign doesn't have a perpetual contract on the com/net gTLDs. Their contract on .net expires in 2005 and .com expires in 2007. The already lost .org to PIR last year, so it is plausible that they may lose .com and/or .net as well.
However, be careful what you ask for. PIR has proven themselves to be even more incompetant than Verisign. It was nice to see them move to EPP, but if they had messed up a .com transition as much as they messed up the .org transition you'd have been crying on your knees to bring Verisign back.
Regardless, SiteFinder still stinks.
"ICANN is Dead" - Verisign
"Verisign is Dead" - ICANN
of Verisign against ICANN put down here.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Article 1, Section 1 of the ICANN bylaws:
The mission of The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ("ICANN") is to coordinate, at the overall level, the global Internet's systems of unique identifiers, and in particular to ensure the stable and secure operation of the Internet's unique identifier systems. In particular, ICANN:
1. Coordinates the allocation and assignment of the three sets of unique identifiers for the Internet, which are
a. Domain names (forming a system referred to as "DNS");
b. Internet protocol ("IP") addresses and autonomous system ("AS") numbers; and
c. Protocol port and parameter numbers.
2. Coordinates the operation and evolution of the DNS root name server system.
3. Coordinates policy development reasonably and appropriately related to these technical functions.
From the Memorandum of Understanding with the U.S. Govt. establishing ICANN, Section II (Purpose), Part B (Purpose):
a. Establishment of policy for and direction of the allocation of IP number blocks;
b. Oversight of the operation of the authoritative root server system;
'nuff said.
Would be for the Gov't to be more aggressive with Sherman Antitrust. Have ICANN say 'Ok, we quit, you can have a monopoly on the internet. But since you're a monopoly now, you're 5 companies.' Have your stockholders put that in their pipe and smoke it. Then a valid way to take out your competition would be to give up. Think of how odd the economy would be.
Karma: Excellent^(-t/Tau), Tau=Wittiness/Trollishness
... for example in (2) : (zooming in, no time yet to read everything, IANAL)
.COM-domain automatically redirected to 1 site is hardly a choice at all).
ICANN was originally established to assist in the transition of the Internet domain name system from one of a single domain name registrar to one with multiple companies competing to provide domain name registration services to Internet users "in a manner that will permit market mechanisms to support competition and consumer choice in the technical management of the [domain name system]." ICANN's ongoing role is to provide technical coordination of the Internet's domain name system by encouriging coordination among various constituent groups using the Internet.
I read a few things here:
1. Verisign acknowledges that ICANN serves in (a coordinating role of) the technical management of the DNS. Therefore, IMHO, it surely must acknowledge that ICANN has to act against the sitefinder service to protect that technical interest. The disadvantages have been clearly written out by lot's of experts in the field, ICANN simply gives them 1 voice - coordinates if you will.
2. Verisign acknowledges that ICANN should 'support consumer choice'. What Verisign has done clearly states a breach of consumer choice (having 99.99999999999% of the domain names in for example the
In short: by Verisign's own words, ICANN is doing something right.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Aren't you still better off when you get an error web page and the browser still has exactly what you typed in the address bar?
"Do not drill any holes in your cat - it will not like it."
-- Nick Davies
1) Hijack all TLDs
2) Profit!
3) Everyone protests
4) Raise awareness of site-finder
5) Profit!
6) People forget
7) site-finder not doing so well
8) Sue ICANN
9) Everyone protests
10) Raise awareness of site-finder
11) Profit!
12) ???
"Do not drill any holes in your cat - it will not like it."
-- Nick Davies
If they get their way with site finder, it seems to me a class action suit should be possible.
Since most non-tech people seem to think that the Internet is the web, let's take the web angle in a very simple way.
I have a web site. A potential customer mistypes my domain name in his browser.
1. Without site finder he gets an error and realizes he has mistyped the address, so he corrects the error and comes to my site.
2. With site finder, he comes to a confusing Verisign page. From there on, who knows where he will get. Probably not to my site. Versisgn is unfairly taking business from me.
And what about email? Badly addressed email is replied to with a bounce message. What happens when it goes to Verisign?
Refining on these ideas, I'm sure domain owners with good lawyers could start a class action suit against Verisign.
(I'm glad that in my country, domain names are managed by a monopolistic body controlled by the state and some universities. It is cheap, fast, simple and efficient, and there is not a single advertisement when registering or managing domain names)
Okay, so there's the perverted duck, his dead lover and a photographer. I think it's pretty obvious which one is "the Internet" - the question is, is Verisign getting its jollies or holding the camera?
Its not about web browsers, and the internet isn't JUST the web. Its about highjacking that which doesnt belong to verisign in the first place. While there may be a small measure (but certainly not anywhere near a majority) of good coming from this sitefinder thing, breaking mail and other software doesn't by any means justify implementing sitefinder. Its clear abuse of position and authority by verisign to unilaterally decide where my typo'd emails/urls/etc go inside the com/net namespace. For once icann appears to be doing the right thing, unfortunately with verisign being a business in the most litigious country in the world, with no end in sight to abuse of the legal process, we'll either have to reimplement those fixes to bind (I havent removed mine), or accept verisigns monopolistic activities.
I am just not sure if there are trying to get in or get out.
That's the message here. I'm more interested in seeing how Verisign is going to respond to massive rejection by those who run nameservers. That hasn't disappeared.
That's unless ISC/BIND at one point gives in. No, that would never happen, they wouldn't, would they? Or would they? Of course I'm talking binary distribution here, source is easily patched.
I'll stick with DJB in the meantime.
I've setup a mailing list for discussion of the SiteFinder issue. Its unmoderated, and open discussion.
d er-discuss
http://wwwapps.2mbit.com/mailman/listinfo/sitefin
Brielle
I think verisign should be forced to register domains through one of their competitors, and if they want to run a sitefinder service on unregistered domains, they should be forced to register those as well. Anything less is an abuse of monopoly power since no-one else has the capability to do anything like this.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Perhaps ICANN should revoke all the registrar agreements, scrap DNS, and just assign IP addresses to users who are then free to map them to whatever they want in a public database.
Why do we need a Domain System hierarchy?
How about we have just names (and types) for records and then IP addresses that map to them. New names can be any currently non existing name (e.g. "mydomain.bill", or just "mydomain", no dots required). Each name is registered to a user account and the account holder can assign any IP address to that name.
LDAP or a single MySQL database distributed throughout the Internet could handle the data and updates instantaneously and much more efficiently than the old BIND system we're currently using.
Verisign has very explicit contracts for operating the TLD's and their respective nameservers.
.COM TLD Agreement which specifies that they must comply with the IETF RFC's, and probably are similarly in violation of their other contracts.
They are in violation of the part of the
The right place to put a search engine hook for non-existent domains is in the browser. But by lying about the existence of domains that are looked up, Verisign's sitefinder makes it so nobody can write their own host lookup service for a browser. So they are in fact removing the ability of people to write their own handlers for this conditions, aside from how they break all the other non-HTTP protocols.
Verisign should have their contract yanked, as soon as possible. No ifs and or buts.
I do.
I can go into my root.zone file right now and remove their root servers.
You can laugh, but that's how the Internet was originally built. A bunch of people agreeing to standards. If people used the standard, it survived. Now that it's big, it may seem like a lot of buerocratic bullshit to get anything changed but in the end we still have the power to conform or not conform to any standard we want to. Mind you, we might not be able to talk to half the Internet when we're done, but that is also our choice.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
all I'm saying is maybe:
ListOfEvilCompanies.addEntry("Verisign");
would have been better coding practice...
Yes and no. They'd have to terminate their contract on the basis of a contract violation. They didn't necessarily "hire" Verisign to do the job. Verisign was the contractor and contractors are bound to contracts. If they don't adhear to the contract then they can be terminated. Just basic contract law stuff.
I will then sue them under the The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act for every possible instance of a domain name that is "confusingly similar" to any trademark I hold. This should work out to several thousand combinations per Mark. (i.e. d0main.com, doma1n.com etc...) Damages are between $1,000 and $100,000 per domain name plus attorney fees. Between myself and anyone else doign this Verisign will be Bankrupt in no time.
Nothing in the DNS RFCs suggests that a compliant DNS server can return arbitrarily chosen answers in response to a DNS question regarding an unknown domain. In fact, doing so clearly violates RFC 1035 section 4.1.1, which specifies that the response code 3 ("name error", also known as NXDOMAIN) should be returned for that case.
How can Verisign personnel seriously claim that there is nothing wrong with SiteFinder?
In my opinion, Verisign already breached their contract to operate the registry when they instituted SiteFinder the first time, and ICANN and the Commerce Department should have started a process to award a new contract to a different registry operator. The wholesale fee of $6/domain/year that Verisign gets is ridiculously large to begin with, which makes it seem even more unprofessional that they deliberately sabotage the registry operation to try to make even more money.
seriously, is there anything we can do in this thread toward putting together an amicus brief? anything that might be useful to icann?
and I will sue your pants off
It really doesn't matter at all. As soon as that first shot was fired (filing the lawsuit), it was over. VeriSign can't win. Even if they won the lawsuit, they still lose, because ICANN will yank their contract at the first opportunity.
.com/.net in perpetuity until they decide they don't want to anymore. And I don't see that happening.
The only way VeriSign can win this is to specify as "damages" for winning that they get to operate
-Todd
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
Effectively Verisign has pointed an infinite number of url's at their ip block ... therefore they should owe someone an infinite amount of money for those url's. If I have to pay for mine, then they should have to pay for theirs.
.com and .net - just my $0.02
Since we have just bankrupted Verisign, then a legitamate company can take over their job of controlling the GTLD servers for
Wow, a comment suggesting a DDoS of someone you disagree with is just beyond something that I would expect to be uttered here.
I can't believe you were modded up for such a suggestion.
Whats next, advocating terrorism against Microsoft?
If you want people to take us seriously, we are going to start painting a better image for ourselves.
Here is the Forbes CEO Approval Poll for Stratton Sclavos. See the steep dip in Sep-Oct 2003? That was Sitefinder. I think it's time to arrest that ratings climb.
(Apologies if Redundant.)
conviency.
.com which must be quite a dump by now.
that's whats giving them the power.
it is very convinient for SOMEBODY to keep the database of
they may be abusive but at least it has worked so far.
-
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
if Verisign doesn't try to roll out Sitefinder until the lawsuit is resolved.... that sounds good...
I guess it would have been much easier and quicker to allow the President to do what he wants without waiting for Congress to get around and pass a law, right?
Sort of like what we have now with Dubya?
People have been calling for the internet, among other things, to be in the hands of the private sector. What have these people to say now? What we are seeing is simply one issue with for-profit corporations running things. What VeriSign is doing is almost inevitable. I am assuming that they have run out of ways to generate more profits. The SiteFinder service was the right cash cow that they needed. Whether they win or lose, there will be other issues like this popping out.
It is my opinion that domain names (all of them, not just most) should be in the hands of the public, preferably academia* instead of government organizations.
Sivaram Velauthapillai NOTES:
* Why Academia instead of government? Because they less corrupt and harder to corrupt, along with the fact that they are not profit-maximizers. Technically, the government controls universities. BUT historically, governments have only had indirect control, due to the long-standing norms in education.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
From the article:
.com zone.
ICANN ordered VeriSign to temporarily shut down the search service in October 2003 while it underwent technical review. The reviewing body has not yet issued a decision on the service.
This is not quite correct. VeriSign was directed to take the wildcard record out of the zone, but the search service is still there (last time I checked, anyway) for anybody to use who wants to.
What folks object to is the fact that the method that they have chosen to implement this "service" can only be done by someone who is controlling the
Verisign clearly intends on arguing that ICANN has no authority over Unassigned Names and Numbers. Let this be a lesson to us all to be more careful when naming our abusive monopolistic corporations.
Quite simply, you're fucking up the Internet. Quit your bitching, and go to Hell. Thank you.
Signed:
Everyone.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
A simple question. Verisign is just a sub-contractor. Why haven't they been fired over site finder, and why do they believe they won't be fired now?
If they are being paid to do a job, they have to do the job they way they are told to do it, or quit/get fired. Right? Why is this any different just because the employee is really a multi-billion dollar corporation?
Since when does "the right to innovate" equate to the right to rewrite job requirements?
plus-good, double-plus-good
What Verisign's action means is that they return a different kind of result for non-existent domains. That's an annoying, one-sided change to technical standards, but apparently, they are not going to budge.
OK, so why not just modify DNS client software to recognize the bogus DNS entries as an authoritative non-response and have them behave as before?
If Verisign persists and tries to mask those domains really well, this may, of course, require trying to connect to the bogus site, but in that case, Verisign is just paying for a lot of bandwidth for advertising without getting any eyeballs for it.
Like the subject says. They are capitalizing mis-typed domains and profitting from them monetarily. What they're attempting to do with sitefinder is no better than Joe Shmoe registering htomail.com and redirecting it to his own commercial site.
eTrade SUCKS
- If a customer's Port 80 web application sends Verisign a DNS request for a missing site, and Verisign responds with a pointer to Sitefinder, and the customer's application sends an HTTP:80 request to Sitefinder, and Sitefinder responds with a web search page, it's greedy and not correct, but mostly harmless and sometimes helpful.
- If a customer's Port 443 Secure Web application sends Verisign a DNS request for a missing site, and Verisign responds with a pointer to Sitefinder, and the customer's application sends Sitefinder a request, it's potentially a serious security breach (though not usually, because usually the connection fails before anything important gets sent.)
- If a customer's email application sends Verisign a DNS request for a missing site, and Verisign responds with a pointer to Sitefinder, and Sitefinder's email application rejects the connection, it's broken in ways that are mildly to seriously annoying.
- And if some other application (even HTTP on port!=80) that Sitefinder doesn't support sends Verisign a DNS request, and Verisign responds with a pointer to Sitefinder, that's badly broken.
If Verisign can't tell the difference between the applications which it helps and the applications it breaks, which they can't, they'd better not go breaking things, and if they break them they should be fired.Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Looks like it's time to cast our votes on what we think of our "favorite" CEO again! Every time Verisign pulls a stunt like this, his approval ratings take a nosedive. Remember, every vote counts, and maybe we can get him down to less than a 1% approval rating this month, if that's possible.
Forbes CEO Approval Poll
Happy voting.
For anyone thinking of doing this, I'd suggest using domain names like "verisign1.com", "verisign2.com", "verisign-a.com", etc. - at least then they'd be easily tracked and filtered. (.*verisign[^.]*\.com)
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
I think this is the time to show ICANN what kind of support it can get from community, just if it starts to acknowledge this community that has a lot to offer (at-large members anyone).
Not only that we should help ICANN to fend off the vultures, we have to show them that by making us an ally, they can not go wrong, since the technical community at large doesn't change alliances based on things other than technical merit.
Maybe it is time for ICANN to announce revoking .com registry stewardship from VeriSign and to start looking for somebody more trustworthy and without conflict of interests.
Just my anonymous $0.02.
Anonymous Cowards Unite
It's a consequence of Zooko's Triangle. See also Clay Shirky's
Domain Names: Memorable, Global, Non-political? In summary, there are three properties you want from a naming scheme:
* memorable names
* globally unique names
* names free from centralized control
Of these properties, you can have any two.
Xenu loves you!
good work! everyone sign! at least it's action!
I've read a few comments here and then had to go look to actually see for myself that Verisign is a public company.
To everyone who is shocked and dismayed over their actions I have to say you need look no further than this to understand why they are doing such ridiculous things.
The mentality of C level execs today is constant growth. And this is only exacerbated when you deal with a public company. The thought of just sitting on a business model that does not require any tinkering is just too much for them to deal with. They feel that without growth they will perish, and nevermind that they are in a given legal monopoly. That just gives them all the more steam to think that they can do whatever they want to feed that growth mentality.
I think the anwser for this particular problem is to give these contracts to a privately held company that does not have to report to anyone but the people who they serve. Better that than a publicly held one who's execs view the world though stock colored glasses.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
The time when Internet was a free place is soon over. In a not so distant future we'll notice how the Internet is being controlled by companies and governments, restricted by rules.
This is my belief, and I'm fairly sure it's true. It's comprehensible that a more restrictive net is required though. This total freedom has its drawbacks. Right now, just anybody can run their own Internet server serving any content they like. That's good for some, bad for others.
You're hitting the nail on the ... (lack of English)
head
at forbes CEO approval rating site!:
l l.html
http://www.forbes.com/2003/05/01/cx_ceointernetpo
I am NaN
What is killing me about this whole thing is that the internet doesn't want sitefinder! This is verisign going: you need this. You want it. And the internet at large going. No, you can keep it.
-- $G
While Verisign is the party at fault here, I think having everybody and their little brother who do understand the problem send mail to Verisign is a slight waste of time. If Verisign can ignore one thoughtful, informed complaint from someone who isn't paying their bills, even as Verisign would themselves benefit from following our sincere advice, they can just as easily ignore a million complaints saying the very same thing.
Instead, I suggest aiming some effort at the people who have the most to lose from Verisign's attempt to occupy every piece of unclaimed virtual territory imaginable: Their current customers, the owners of COM and NET domains. Of course, you may already be a Verisign customer, and if so you are encouraged to complain directly to Verisign in that capacity, but I still ask that you engage other COM and NET domain owners in the same effort, in particular those you have some kind of relationship with.
I don't own any COM or NET domain myself, nor do I depend directly on such a domain for my own e-mail or web pages (living in Sweden, using domains in our national ccTLD instead). When Verisign made their first attempt less than six months ago, I scanned a few years' worth of e-mail logs (I maintain a university department mail server) for envelope sender domains, and ordered them by frequency. I figured that if Verisign were to persist, I could (at least in theory, as a last resort) reject any mail from *.COM or *.NET, asking senders to use some other TLD when talking to us, while pointing at spam for an excuse.
I then wrote and sent off a complaint to Verisign, pointing out the options at my disposal. I sent copies of my complaint to the postmasters of the 22 most frequently occuring domains in my mail server log files (I'm not listing them here as every site has its own clientele; you can probably guess half of them anyway). In addition to a few dumb autoreplies, I did recieve one affirmative acknowledgement from the postmaster of a major ISP letting my message form the basis for their own formal request to Verisign to remove the wildcard record, as it hampered their spam controls. Now that is one ISP held in high regard by me!
In addition to domain owners, don't hesitate to contact also users of affected domains that somehow depend on you, asking them to contact their domain management, so that they will in turn be motivated to talk to Verisign.
It's not the number of messages sent to Verisign that count, but the number of paying customers behind any messages sent. If Verisign is willing to sue ICANN in the hope of changing the rules of the game, maybe they are just as happy to sue their own customers in the hope of keeping them onboard?
Because all country, be it allied , friendly or not, will see it as the US grabbing on power the net and imposing its own policy on the world. This would be seen as quite innaceptable by all country (Even if it is on a technical side. The same reason that the US see as innaceptable the UN/International stuff in any form, which it sees breaking over their sovereignity and refuse to even discuss without getting "special treatment"). The result would be either to create a fully UN governed body for internet which would be quickly frozen either by the US or by other country depending on the direction, or to explode every network in a big balkanisation. *AND* poison even further more international relationship.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
... Use your manage cookies widget to clear away all prospero.com cookies
It's not like anybody here is suggesting a coordinated, physical attack against Verisign because they have merely expressed an unpopular opinion. Rather, it's a hint of what may happen automatically under certain observable conditions, as a warning against creating those conditions.
If a company says "Beginning next week, we want to be notified of every spelling error made by anybody in writing, anywhere in the world, in any language" and I make a few extra spelling errors just for fun, I'm not making even a dent in their log file. If, on the other hand, I have an audience of half a billion clueless Internet users doing exactly what I suggest, I'm in effect coordinating a DDoS attack.
I don't have an audience of half a billion. Verisign has, in providing the COM and NET registries. If anybody is coordinating a DDoS attack against Verisign, it's Verisign themselves. Some slashdotter merely interpreted Verisign's suicidal statements for the rest of us. That's not the same thing as advocating terrorism.
Anonymous cowards have no image to better.
mostly W hasn't gone rampant with his powers - he just is misleading enough (either by cluelessness or active deception) to get people to do what he wants.
I've been an "anyone but Bush" supporter for a long time, but W hasn't done what Nixon did - he has "merely" abused the trust of the people and the powers given to him by others, while Nixon actively claimed powers belonging (legally) to others.
doesn't their authority over any domain naming come from ICANN? I thought that ICANN had authority for naming and subcontracted out some of that authority and responsibility to others such as Verisign. The rights to use unused names might depend on the terms of their agreement, but would probably not belong to Verisign unless it was explicitly given to them (IANAL).
The key part of the SS (SS = Social Security) analogy is not whether SS can open a business, but whether they can use data which they possess but do not own for purposes other than those for which they were given the data. SS could not use such data for something else because it isn't theirs to use, but belongs to the federal gov't (and ultimately the people as a whole). SS could not use or treat common property (their database) as their own; they haven't been (and will, I hope, never be) given that right. If SS can't operate another business (as you said) then the incentive for that act goes away, but the action wouldn't be right - just illegal and stupid. Verisign has not been given the right to use unused namespace as their own, and now is suing because someone prevented them from taking that right. Unfortunately, Verisign doesn't have the same restrictions as Social Security, and so has the desire (and the venality to act on their desire).
I understand your last points, but I don't really what to do about it. As for Verisign, I don't know what to do about them, but I'm hoping there's a nice warm place for them when they die...
Don't forget the Strowger automated telephone exchange was originally invented by Mr Strowger, the owner of funeral parlour.
He was prompted to do so because the wife of one of his his competitors was employed at the local phone exchange, and mysterously calls kept getting misdirected.
Can't ICANN just have another orgization handle .com and .net domains, and then let VeriSign run Sitefinder? It wouldn't (would it?) work correctly anymore, unless people used VeriSign domain servers.
Everyones happy (besides VeriSign).
TruePunk | Games
I'm afraid it's not that simple. The protocol specification does allow for a wildcard record, with the semantics that every domain matching the wildcard is considered to "exist" in the language of the RFC. Thus, returning NXDOMAIN in spite of the presence of a wildcard would be a protocol violation, but Verisign isn't doing that.
To a technical person like you or me, the existance or non-existance of a domain is determined by its presence in the DNS, not by some contract between a domain holder and a registrar. As long as the registrar allows DNS data to reflect all relevant agreements, there is no difference between the legal and the technical definition of "exist".
However, Verisign has attempted to separate the two definitions from each other, so that they can still say to ICANN that in a legal sense they have only assigned so-and-so many domains for six dollars per domain and year, while from a technical point of view every previously nonexistant domain has suddenly been allocated, and assigned to Verisign, for zero dollars per domain and year (but later deallocated, on demand from ICANN). That's not fair practice, and that's what ICANN should nail them for, rather than a perceived violation of RFC 1035.
In addition to that, we all have very valid concerns about the stability of the Internet and the usefulness of the DNS, concerns which should also be part of the deal between ICANN and Verisign, although I don't know how it has been worded. Problem is, we see it from our perspective, while Verisign sees it from their perspective, and many of us aren't even Verisign customers, meaning they will hardly listen to us.
From their perspective, they are probably right. How could they possibly see any problem, when they are blindfolded by their own limited frame of reference? It's a kind of corporate solipsism (everything revolves around us, and everybody else should thank us for their very existance; not that their thanks are worth anything except for decorating our press releases).
Immanuel Kant would have a field day with Verisign.
Just a few examples of how the California Enron crisis could have been avoided:
1) Campaign finance reform. After all, do you think Enron would have been able to engineer deregulation legislation in California without plenty of campaign donations?
2) Death penalty for corporations. After all, they are "persons," right? Why should they have all the advantages of being "persons" but none of the disadvantages? If Enron were "executed," dissolved completely and its board of directors never allowed to serve on another board again, I do believe that would serve as a deterrent. As for the regular old death penalty, well, that's a different story. Corporate bigwigs are generally more cautious than common violent criminals (which is why white collar crooks are harder to catch), so would probably be less likely to participate in a scandal that had REAL repercussions, not a slap on the wrist.
3) Tax refunds for energy corporations that invest in renewable energy like wind, solar, thermal depolymerization (if it really works), etc. I know this is sort of like subsidization, but considering how little corporations pay in taxes, the health benefits alone of cleaner air should compensate the taxpayers.
4) Price caps, like California used to have.
I'm not saying public utilities don't work, just that your argument doesn't really hold water. An analogus argument: there exist some private schools that are worse than some public schools, so public schools are always better. Or, the mob-controlled private waste management companies would be better run by the government, so the government should run all waste management companies. Citing an incompetent private industry, like the California energy producers, is just setting up a straw man. I'm sure there are private energy companies that could do a much better job than your public utility, if they weren't given free reign to rip-off the consumers.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
This is truly the most bureaucratic, useless organization on Earth. I believe in the sovereignty of nations. If sovereign nations can't get along with each other, the U.N. isn't going to be able to make them good citizens. And the same will hold true for running the internet. They'd only mess it up by handing it over to the bought and paid-for politicians!
Corporate control is a notch better, but the ultimate is a private non-profit that's run by a rotating group of volunteers with the necessary expertise.
Around the US, several statues of the blind lady of justice are seen gagging uncontrollably during the announcement of the case.
[Now, I'm off to lift my le... Um, visit... at another place.]
Yeah, there's a great example. The WHO thinks the solution to the AIDS epidemic in Africa (and elsewhere) should be solved by handing out prophylactics. Not only has this not provided a solution, it has perpetuated behavioral problems, some of which involve the "traditional" tribal roles of women, and others of which are just purely and simply promiscuous behaviors. The Ugandan government, on the other hand, decided to buck the trend, and has seen results:
l it y/se0074.html
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/sexua
However, I would suggest we simply get rid of verisign, ICANN, and every other company that can hold the internet hostage.
;)
Start with DNS:
How about this, instead of having root DNS servers, lets just a roll out dns-database files weekly per root domain. That way, we have redundancy and NOONE can take out DNS if they blew up the root locations. We could create a service like NNTP to pass the pgp-signed file(s) around. Then, verisign would have to explicitly indicate that the void domains under their delegation lead to their search service since they would be signing the file themselves. Its easier to take a signed file to court then a snapshot of what invalid domains resolved to months ago.
Although, this is probably not practical and reverts the internet back to bitnet-days. Its probably better to roll out your own internal DNS server and CNAMEs 127.0.0.1 to any IP it cannot resolve...OR for the security conscious, CNAME to example.{org,net,com,...}.
Although you realize it still comes down to the fact that SOMEONE has to be in charge of each root domain, and SOMEONE has to be in charge of the root domains. Do you think we need SOMEONE watching that person too? How much "control" do you think they have? There are alternate root domains too, its just a matter of which dns server your using and if they want to resolve certain TLDs. Also keep in mind that the person running the dns server your querying can fudge things up too if they wanted their own FREE domain(s)...unlikely since its dangerous for that admin risks his career, but not impossible. They can also keep a log of what domains your querying. (Do you care if they track whether what kind of porn sites you go to?) So this "control" you speak of is relative at different levels. Do you care about the control over yourself, the control over your connection to the internet, the control over your ISP, etc? The U.S. does not control the internet, however, it may be able to influence the BIG routers leading outside its country at risk of pissing off multinational corporations with WANS stretching out to several countries.
Verison and ICANN are not in control of DNS, at least not the resolution part of things. Thats up to the server your using and the client querying the server. Someone could always code up a patch for computers that proxies dns queries and changes unknown domains or Sitefinder domains to example.com or a local html page on your computer if your using a web browser. even if ICANN and verisign went down, we'd still have other domains. And you could also keep a cached copy of your most frequent dns lookups just in case you lose your dns server. Still think someone can hold the internet hostage? What is the real issue here? Politics.
You do that big boy. See how it works out for you.
Transfer everything to a joint council of OSDN, Microsoft, and the United Nations. ;-)
Of course, ICANN is much more concerned with "Intellectual Property" than with that other boring definition of IP that those boring computer networking people use, so perhaps they haven't noticed.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
On the other hand, Sitefinder does know ports, so if Verisign DNS tells you Sitefinder's IP address, your application will try to talk to Sitefinder. It does something moderately correct if you send it an http request on port 80, and does something moderately broken if you send it an smtp request on port 25, and AFAIK it doesn't connect to any other port. (They could do an SSL-based search page on 443 if they wanted, and could also put their regular web server on popular alternative ports like 8000 and 8080 and their stubby email rejector on the alternative SMTP/SASL/SUBMIT ports.) (And I suppose I could nmap them to find out :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks