-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 [Cross-posted]
From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40241-2003Oct3.html , since the site requires some minor but irritating form of registration: VeriSign Freezes Search Service By David McGuire washingtonpost.com Staff Writer Friday, October 3, 2003; 2:56 PM VeriSign Inc., the firm that operates a key piece of the Internet's address system, said it would temporarily shut down a new service that makes money off the typos of Web users after the Internet's oversight body threatened to take legal action against the company. Earlier today, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) President Paul Twomey sent a letter to VeriSign demanding that the company take the service down or face legal consequences. Under its contracts with VeriSign ICANN can impose up to $100,000 in fines or strip the company of its authority to operate the registries that handle dot-com and dot-net Internet addresses. "Without so much as a hearing, ICANN today formally asked us to shut down the Site Finder service," said VeriSign spokesman Tom Galvin. "We will accede to their request while we explore all of our options." The Mountain View, Calif.-based company refused ICANN's request last week to take down the service long enough for technical experts to determine whether it was damaging the Internet. ICANN officials were not immediately available for comment. Critics say that VeriSign abused its monopoly power over the registries with Site Finder, which steers millions of Web surfers a day to its own online search directory when they incorrectly type Internet addresses. Site Finder offers links to sites with names similar to the user's original query, along with a search box and Web directory full of advertising. The directory competes with similar search services from the likes of America Online, Microsoft and others. Its ads are provided by Overture, a company being bought by Yahoo Inc. VeriSign could easily generate $100 million in revenue annually from Site Finder by selling "sponsored" results to search terms, said Mark Lewyn, chairman of Reston, Va.-based Paxfire Inc., which develops systems to redirect Internet traffic. The move irked companies like AOL and Microsoft, which lost traffic to their own search sites. Two other companies have filed lawsuits against VeriSign, claiming its service represents unfair competition: Orlando-based Popular Enterprises LLC, owner of the Netster search engine, and Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Go Daddy Software Inc., which sells Internet addresses. VeriSign also angered the close-knit group of engineers and scientists who are familiar with the technology underpinning the Internet. They say that Site Finder undermines the worldwide Domain Name System, causing e-mail systems, spam-blocking technology and other applications to malfunction. VeriSign said the claims are overblown. "There is no data to indicate the core operation of the domain name system or the stability of the Internet has been adversely affected," VeriSign's Galvin said. "ICANN is using anecdotal and isolated issues in an attempt to assert a dubious right to regulate non-registry services." Before agreeing to take down Site Finder, VeriSign had promised to work with the Internet community to iron out any glitches triggered by Site Finder. Site Finder has triggered the first real showdown between VeriSign -- the world's largest Internet addressing company -- and ICANN, the group created by the U.S. government to bring order and competition to the growing online world. "War is breaking out between the regulators and the people they regulate. This is a real power struggle [over] who controls the rules on the Internet going forward," said said Paxfire's Lewyn. [end quote] ICANN's rather strong letter to Verisign is at: http://www.icann.org/correspondence/twomey-to-lewis-03oct03.htm Among other stuff, it includes: ... Based on the information currently available to us, it appears that these changes have had a substantial adverse effect on the core operation of the DNS, on the stability of the Internet, and on the relevant domains, and may have additional adverse effects in the future. These effects appear to be significant, including effects on web browsing, certain email services and applications, sequenced lookup services and a pervasive problem of incompatibility with other established protocols. In addition, the responses of various persons and entities to the changes made by VeriSign may themselves adversely affect the continued effective functioning of the Internet, the DNS and the .com and .net domains. Under these circumstances, the only prudent course of action consistent with ICANN's coordination mission is to insist that VeriSign suspend these changes pending further evaluation and study, including (but certainly not limited to) the public meeting already scheduled by ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee on 7 October in Washington, D.C. In addition, our review of the .com and .net registry agreements between ICANN and VeriSign leads us to the conclusion that VeriSign?s unilateral and unannounced changes to the operation of the .com and .net Top Level Domains are not consistent with material provisions of both agreements. These inconsistencies include violation of the Code of Conduct and equal access provisions, failure to comply with the obligation to act as a neutral registry service provider, failure to comply with the Registry Registrar Protocol, failure to comply with domain registration provisions, and provision of an unauthorized Registry Service. These inconsistencies with VeriSign's obligations under the .com and .net registry agreements are additional reasons why the changes in question must be suspended pending further evaluation and discussion between ICANN and VeriSign. Given these conclusions, please consider this a formal demand to return the operation of the .com and .net domains to their state before the 15 September changes, pending further technical, operational and legal evaluation. A failure to comply with this demand will require ICANN to take the steps necessary under those agreements to compel compliance with them. ... Given the magnitude of the issues that have been raised, and their potential impact on the security and stability of the Internet, the DNS and the .com and .net top level domains, VeriSign must suspend the changes to the .com and .net top-level domains introduced on 15 September 2003 by 6:00 PM PDT on 4 October 2003. Failure to comply with this demand by that time will leave ICANN with no choice but to seek promptly to enforce VeriSign's contractual obligations. [end quote] I hope I can change my .signature back soon... - -- Raju - -- Raj Mathur [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kandalaya.org/ GPG: 78D4 FC67 367F 40E2 0DD5 0FEF C968 D0EF CC68 D17F All your domain are belong to us. It is the mind that moves -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.5.6 and Gnu Privacy Guard <http://www.gnupg.org/> iD8DBQE/fkNAyWjQ78xo0X8RAohRAJ4g2smqIkptBdFwL5A3F1v9pbU6ygCfeImu r88CcTI0K6s75Dybq4ZOCOw= =sS4Q -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
