Begin forwarded message:
> From: Jeffrey Kay
> Date: Tue Sep 23, 2003 7:20:55 AM US/Pacific
> To: FoRK
> Subject: Verisign’s Domain Redirects
>
> Seems like DNS is in trouble yet again. This is a pretty interesting
> issue.
> One could argue that managing a root gTLD server is a public trust and
> Verisign is violating that trust.
>
> — jeff
>
> VeriSign stands firm on domain redirect
> Last modified: September 22, 2003, 6:07 PM PDT
> By Declan McCullagh
> Staff Writer, CNET News.com
> Â Â Â Â Â
>
> VeriSign said Monday that it would not abandon its decision to point
> unassigned domain names at its Web site, but representatives did say
> the
> company would form a technical committee later this week to look into
> the
> problems caused by the change.
>
> During the last week, criticism has steadily grown over VeriSign’s ”
> SiteFinder ” service, which has caused problems for network
> administrators
> and confused spam-blocking utilities. A number of Internet standards
> bodies
> and administrative groups have asked the Mountain View, Calif.-based
> company–which enjoys a government-granted monopoly over the .com and
> .net
> registry–to stop, and a second lawsuit seeking an injunction against
> the
> practice was filed Monday.
>
> On Monday, VeriSign spokesman Tom Galvin said SiteFinder would remain
> in
> place because “we think the technical review committee is the
> appropriate
> mechanism before making any long-term decisions about the service.” The
> committee members who will be chosen by VeriSign and will report to the
> company will be announced later this week, Galvin said.
>
> “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,” VeriSign Vice President Russell Lewis said in a Sunday
> letter
> to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
> “These
> results are consistent with the findings from the extensive research we
> performed.”
>
> ICANN is the nonprofit organization that oversees Internet domain
> names. On
> Friday, the group asked VeriSign to pull the plug on its “wildcard”
> redirection service.
>
> Since then, ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee has
> published
> a more-detailed critique of the technical problems caused by VeriSign’s
> move. The committee–which includes a VeriSign representative–said it
> would
> hold a public meeting in the Washington, D.C., area on Oct. 7 and has
> asked
> for feedback to be sent to secsac-comments [at] icann [dot] org.
>
> “VeriSign’s change appears to have considerably weakened the stability
> of
> the Internet, introduced ambiguous and inaccurate responses in the
> (Domain
> Name System), and has caused an escalating chain reaction of measures
> and
> countermeasures that contribute to further instability,” the
> committee’s
> critique said. “VeriSign’s change has substantially interfered with
> some
> number of existing services which depend on the accurate, stable, and
> reliable operation of the domain name system.”
>
> VeriSign’s new policy is intended to generate more advertising revenue
> from
> additional visitors to its network of Web sites. But the change has
> had the
> side effect of rewiring a portion of the Internet that software
> designers
> always had expected to behave a certain way. That can snarl antispam
> mechanisms that check to see if the sender’s domain exists, complicate
> the
> analysis of network problems and possibly even pollute search engine
> results. Because VeriSign will become a central destination for
> mistyped
> e-mail and Web traffic, its move also raises serious privacy questions.
>
> On Monday, domain name registrar Go Daddy Software filed a lawsuit in
> federal district court in Arizona seeking to halt the SiteFinder
> redirection. “VeriSign has hijacked this entire process,” Bob Parsons,
> president of Go Daddy, said in a statement. “When the user is sent to
> VeriSign’s advertising page, VeriSign gets paid by the advertiser when
> the
> user clicks a link to get off the page, to the tune of $150 million
> annually, as estimated by VeriSign.”
>
> It appears to be the second lawsuit filed in response to VeriSign’s
> move.
> Popular Enterprises, the parent company of search provider
> Netster.com, sued
> VeriSign over the SiteFinder redirection last week, alleging antitrust
> violations, unfair competition and violations of the Deceptive and
> Unfair
> Trade Practices Act.
>
> Also in response to VeriSign’s move, the well-respected Internet
> Architecture Board published on Saturday a document titled
> “Architectural
> Concerns on the use of DNS Wildcards,” referring to the domain name
> system.
> It says the danger of “wildcard records is that they interact poorly
> with
> any use of the DNS that depends on ‘no such name’ responses.”
>
> jeffrey kay
> weblog
> share files with me — get shinkuro —
>
> “first get your facts, then you can distort them at your leisure” —
> mark
> twain
> “if the person in the next lane at the stoplight rolls up the window
> and
> locks the door, support their view of life by snarling at them” — a
> biker’s
> guide to life
> “if A equals success, then the formula is A equals X plus Y plus Z. X
> is
> work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.” — albert einstein
>
>
>