[64134] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Verisign to sell Network Solutions
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Owen DeLong)
Thu Oct 16 13:24:38 2003
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 09:50:00 -0700
From: Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com>
To: Michael.Dillon@radianz.com, rekoil@semihuman.com
Cc: "Adam C. Greenfield" <agreenfield@jtlnet.com>,
Mark Radabaugh <mark@amplex.net>, nanog@merit.edu
In-Reply-To: <OF30F78451.2C584E05-ON80256DC1.0057BB55-80256DC1.0058AE85@radianz.com>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
--On Thursday, October 16, 2003 5:08 PM +0100 Michael.Dillon@radianz.com
wrote:
>
>> So...correct me if I'm wrong here...does this mean that the registry
> services
>> operations and the GTLD maintenance operations for .com/.net will be
> owned by
>> different companies?
>
> Yep. And it means that Verisign business is no longer
> based so much on serving customers but more on leveraging
> various monopoly rights that they have such as ownership
> of .com and ownership of the main root CAs whose
> certificates are bundled with Microsoft's OS.
>
They don't OWN .com or .net. They have a contract to administer
them in the interests of the public trust placed in them by USDOC
and ICANN. They keep pretending they OWN them and that is a big
part of the problem. We must not buy into this or they WILL end
up effectively owning them. That will be even worse than what we
are seeing today.
>> Isn't that what we wanted all along?
>
> Uhhh... sort of, but I guess most folks really just wanted
> the whole domain name business to be handled in an open
> honest and fair manner. This latest move by Verisign doesn't
> make any substantial advance in that direction.
>
In fact, it is arguably regressive.
> The fact is that we have created Verisign's .COM monopoly
> by treating .com domains as the cool thing to have and we
> are sustaining Verisign's .COM monopoly by not educating our
> customers and our friends about the alternative domains
> that are available.
>
While there is some validity to this, the reality is that there are
a lot of existing .com identities that should not have to change just
because Verisign is greedy. ICANN should work with good lawyers to
develop a better contract for managing the .com and .net zones in the
public interest and entrust that contract to an appropriate not-for-proffit
organization as a replacement for Verisign's current abuses. They should
attempt to expidite the transition, but, may be stuck with Verisgin until
2006/2007. Certainly, there should be no extension of Verisign's current
contract, and, the orderly transition of the registry should be started
as soon as possible.
Owen
