I kind of look at it like this...VeriSign is only contracted to
maintain the registry and they don't technically own the domain names
in question (although they have attempted to claim so in the past). I
believe it to be improper for them to benefit financially from
effectively claiming every un-registered combination and using them
commercially without paying a fee for it. I don't feel this way about
.museum because that isn't a for profit venture and there is no money
being made from the functionality there.
As far as ccTLD's go, I don't like the fact that some have been
commercialized in the first place, however ICANN is powerless to do
anything about this. They can complain, but they can't stop a country
like Togo from doing whatever they want with their namespace. To
protest such activities is useless IMO, just look at the UN in general,
we don't even listen to the UN as a country if we don't feel like it,
so why should Togo on a matter that has so little impact and can be
worked around so easily. ICANN certainly isn't going to impose
sanctions on them :) I believe though that they could find VeriSign in
violation of their contract as a registrar by claiming names for their
own commercial use without paying for them, and they should do just
that.
I wouldn't personally favor going after MuseDomo because they are
clearly always going to lose a good deal of money on a namespace that
accounts for just 0.000016% of all names registered and the
functionality isn't being abused, instead, it is being used exclusively
to help in a very tight context (632 potential sites with a TLD set up
to help increase awareness of museums on the Web in general).
I think the whole idea of wildcarding TLD's isn't purely bad, just when
it is used commercially. I would be all for some not-for-profit doing
this for all domains in order to help Web surfers and to avoid
confusion from default Microsoft IE and AOL functionality which takes
this traffic as their own and opens up a good deal of potential for
abuse (advertising buy.com for amazon.com misspellings for instance).
They could achieve this by simply doing something like returning close
matches for the unregistered domain name, and rank them both by
closeness (like Meriam-Webster) and also by popularity. Such a system
could not be abused and would benefit the Web surfer, and for our
purposes, it would be easy to work around as has already been done.
Heck, VeriSign could even do this as far as the way I see it, just not
the way it is being done now as a for-profit money buys placement sort
of model.
Matt
Kevin Bilbee wrote:
Agreed.
But,
Reguardless of the size of the TLD, if
wildcards are found unacceptable for gTLD's then .museum should also
stop, countries should also stop. The accaptable rules for DNS should
not change due to the fact you are a country.
Kevin Bilbee
There are two different classes though of TLD's in question though,
gTLD's and ccTLD's. The only other offending gTLD is the .museum
domain, and efforts to wildcard .biz was stopped by ICANN. Some of the
ccTLD's are being used generically, however it seems that ICANN is
going about this as an issue for the country in question to decide.
Personally, I believe that the wildcard .museum domains aren't really
an issue since this isn't a commercial domain, and only museums can
apply for one and there are only 632 such names in existence.
In this context, VeriSign is on it's own, and VeriSign is merely the
party currently given the responsibility for maintaining the registry
for .com and .net, and not the organization in charge of all such
affairs concerning that gTLD.
Hatred for VeriSign should also be shared by Yahoo who is supplying the
backend for the search mechanism to work (Inktomi and Overture).
I don't give this very long before it gets pulled. If it doesn't get
pulled, ICANN should be forced to go under a total reorganization.
Matt
Kevin Bilbee wrote:
Lets start this off with I agree Versign has done things in the past that
were on the shady side. But I also feel that on this issue they are being
targeted because they are the largest TLD operator with a wildcard
implementation.
A good side affect is that if I was receiving spam from a nonexistane
.museum domain MAILFROM would not fail. Would Scott have fixed Declude to
handle wildcards?
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Phillip B.
Holmes
Sent: Saturday, September 20, 2003 11:38 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [Declude.JunkMail] VeriGrime
Kevin,
I agree in theory to your point but your argument does not take
the scale of
this situation into consideration. The .com extension is
typically the most
sought after extension. .Net is widely used for ISPs that have been most
affected by operator processes that are / were in place for their users /
network optimization.
This maneuver was not a violation DNS specification. However, this
substantially more serious and market affecting than anything
else that has
happened so far. Lets forget about the hundreds of thousands of
processes it
disabled for a minute and just look at the possible legal violations of
VeriSign's Registry Agreement. There are far reaching ramifications
pertaining the search engine market as well (Hence the 100 million dollar
antitrust lawsuit:
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/6818688.htm).
What the Verisign petition/lawsuit is saying is if you rob Fort Knox clean
it is not ok, but if you just rob a small town bank you should be able to
walk free.
If Versign's laywers are smart they will get the suit thrown out in bias.
They are not listing or sewing any other TLD owners that are using
wildcards.
I am not the owner of whois.sc. So, I would express your opinion
directly to
them. I posted that for the thousands of sysadmins that have had tens of
thousands of processes break because of the unilateral change made by this
wildcard implementation. I also point out that VeriBlind did this without
ICANN approval. This has also prompted the IAB to release a commentary on
the use of DNS wildcards:
http://www.iab.org/documents/docs/2003-09-20-dns-wildcards.html
This article makes no mention of VeriSign. Instead it says "Problems
encountered in a recent experiment with wildcards"
At least they are being fair and not specifically mentioning a particular
TLD operator. That was my original point.
Today, ICANN has formerly asked VeriSlime to voluntarily suspend the Site
Finder "service" pending an investigation that was ALREADY underway before
the update was released.
Then ICANN should ask all TLD operators to remove their wildcard
implementations. They affect queries just like Verisigns wildcards. Once
again BIAS against Verisign because they are the operators of the two
largest TLDs.
VeriMime has been strangely very quiet. I wonder why.
Best Regards,
Phillip B. Holmes
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Kevin Bilbee
Sent: Sunday, September 21, 2003 12:31 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [Declude.JunkMail] VeriCrime
I think for this to stick they need to change the letter to address the
issue of other TLD systems that do the same thing. YOU are TARGETING one
company when in fact others started this before Verisign with other TLDs.
If this is what you actual believe on its technical
merits/violation of the
RFCs then the letter should be expanded to include all companies
that manage
TLD root servers that return and answer for non-existent domains.
Although I think the letter makes good technical points, I think it is
misplaced to reference only Verisign.
I would sign a letter that includes all companies that manage TLD root
servers that return answers for non-existent domain names.
My two cents.
Kevin Bilbee
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Phillip Holmes
Sent: Saturday, September 20, 2003 7:29 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [Declude.JunkMail] VeriCrime
Petition against VeriCrime's abuse of root operation:
http://www.whois.sc/verisign-dns/
Best Regards,
Phillip B. Holmes
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of serge
Sent: Saturday, September 20, 2003 5:22 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [Declude.JunkMail] Veriscam
oops
just found something in the archive, please disregard my question
if it was
already explained here in simple tems
i will read the archives and see if i get it :)
|
