Re: A few words on VeriSign's sitefinder

2004-02-10 Thread Curtis Maurand

On Tue, 10 Feb 2004, David Monosov wrote:

> where there is power, there are struggles to take control over that power,
> and exploit it. This is apparently one of the beauties of democratic
> capitalism (under which I will be so bold to presume many of us live).
>  

The United States is a republic, not a democracy.  There's a huge 
difference.  

Curtis


-- 
--
Curtis Maurand
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.maurand.com




Re: A few words on VeriSign's sitefinder

2004-02-10 Thread williamelan.net

> On Tue, 10 Feb 2004, David Monosov wrote:
> 
> > where there is power, there are struggles to take control over that power,
> > and exploit it. This is apparently one of the beauties of democratic
> > capitalism (under which I will be so bold to presume many of us live).
>
> The United States is a republic, not a democracy.  There's a huge 
> difference.  

Are you well enough versed in the political science to define and 
understand the differences? If you're you'll know that there is no and 
never been any true democracy anywhere and republic is just one type of 
this political system.

And in my view US can be be described as corporate republic. Meaning large 
companies and special interest choose and make the elite (rather then 
individual families as in classic republic or democracy) and use goverment
to futher achieve their goals and legal and financial system to maintain 
control over demos and use press and other means (financial and otherwise) 
to that purpose.

-- 
William Leibzon
Elan Networks
[EMAIL PROTECTED]



Re: A few words on VeriSign's sitefinder

2004-02-10 Thread Paul Vixie

[EMAIL PROTECTED] ("David Monosov") writes:

> ...
> Root servers, and the .net, .com (as well as .org) domains belong to the
> world now; Welcome to the global democracy, brought to you by the ability
> to send packets across the globe at the speed of light. We all rely on
> them, and their management should be done in a way appropriate for their
> status.

i tend to agree that there is a conflict of interest between the commercial
providers in this sector and both (a) their own customers, as well as (b) the
outside community of interest.  and...

> There are many capable organizations worldwide which could assume such a
> task. ISC (previously mentioned in this context) would indeed be a fine
> choice as it has proven itself to be reliable and politically independent
> over time.

thank you, on behalf of isc and our board, for your respectful words.  but...

> ... Power is a dangerous thing, especially in the wrong hands.

power is dangerous thing, in any small set of hands.  diversity in all things!
-- 
Paul Vixie


Re: A few words on VeriSign's sitefinder

2004-02-11 Thread Curtis Maurand

On Tue, 10 Feb 2004, williamelan.net wrote:

> >
> > The United States is a republic, not a democracy.  There's a huge 
> > difference.  
> 
> Are you well enough versed in the political science to define and 
> understand the differences? If you're you'll know that there is no and 
> never been any true democracy anywhere and republic is just one type of 
> this political system.

I majored in History not MIS/CS.
> 
> And in my view US can be be described as corporate republic. Meaning large 
> companies and special interest choose and make the elite (rather then 
> individual families as in classic republic or democracy) and use goverment
> to futher achieve their goals and legal and financial system to maintain 
> control over demos and use press and other means (financial and otherwise) 
> to that purpose.

 Of course, what you describe is the what the US political system has been 
perverted into.  

This is way off topic.  We can continue this off list if you wish.

Curtis

--
Curtis Maurand
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.maurand.com




Lawsuit on ICANN (was: Re: A few words on VeriSign's sitefinder)

2004-02-26 Thread Deepak Jain


Since no one else has mentioned this:

http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/040226/tech_verisign_2.html



Re: Lawsuit on ICANN (was: Re: A few words on VeriSign's sitefinder)

2004-02-26 Thread Neil J. McRae

> http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/040226/tech_verisign_2.html

can't say I'm surprised. Another nail in the Verisign coffin.


Re: Lawsuit on ICANN (was: Re: A few words on VeriSign's sitefinder)

2004-02-26 Thread Jay Hennigan

On Thu, 26 Feb 2004, Deepak Jain wrote:

> Since no one else has mentioned this:
>
> http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/040226/tech_verisign_2.html

Looks like I need to stock up on popcorn.

-- 
Jay Hennigan - CCIE #7880 - Network Administration - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
WestNet:  Connecting you to the planet.  805 884-6323  WB6RDV
NetLojix Communications, Inc.  -  http://www.netlojix.com/


Re: Lawsuit on ICANN (was: Re: A few words on VeriSign's sitefinder)

2004-02-26 Thread Scott Call

On Thu, 26 Feb 2004, Roman Volf wrote:

>
> When are they up for renewal exactly?

November 10, 2007, according to
http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/verisign/registry-agmt-com-25may01.htm

-S




Re: Lawsuit on ICANN (was: Re: A few words on VeriSign's sitefinder)

2004-02-26 Thread Paul Vixie

in response to...
> http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/040226/tech_verisign_2.html
X-Mailer: MH-E 7.4; nmh 1.0.4; GNU Emacs 21.3.1

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Neil J. McRae) writes:
> can't say I'm surprised. Another nail in the Verisign coffin.

it's not nearly that simple.

[EMAIL PROTECTED] ("John Neiberger") added:
> They must have taken a page from the recently-released book "How to Shoot Your
> Company in the Foot," by SCO.

there's a certain inevitability to these things.  sco believed that it had no choice
except closing its doors or suing.  verisign may feel likewise.  the palatable choices 
were all discarded much earlier, and not nec'ily in ways whose outcomes were knowable.

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (William Leibzon) writes:
> And I'm sure ICANN will remember it for long time - right up to the point 
> when Verisign's contracts for .com/.net management are up for renewal.

IANAL, but upon rereading the contract a few months ago they looked self-perpetuating
and there appears to be no circumstance no matter how unreasonable under which icann
could select a different operator for the .com or .net registries.  but don't take my
word for it -- pay a lawyer to read 
and then let us all know what she tells you.

the paper at  entitled
"Site Finder and Internet Governance" by Jonathan Weinberg is also quite instructive.
-- 
Paul Vixie


RE: Lawsuit on ICANN (was: Re: A few words on VeriSign's sitefinder)

2004-02-26 Thread David Schwartz


By the way, do we even know what we're talking about? Specifically, has
VeriSign produced a set of specifications for exactly what SiteFinder is and
does?

For example, is it guaranteed to return the same A record for all
unregistered domains? Is it guaranteed that that A record will not change?

Until VeriSign produces a technical specification for what it is they
intend to do, they cannot expect other people to opine about what effects
their changes will have. VeriSign has not yet even started the notification
and analysis period.

Isn't VeriSign's lawsuit premature? I mean, ICANN has not yet said no to
any specific technical proposal from VeriSign, at least as far as I know. Is
VeriSign arguing that they should be able to do whatever they want with the
root DNS, with no advance notice to anyone?

DS




RE: Lawsuit on ICANN (was: Re: A few words on VeriSign's sitefinder)

2004-02-26 Thread Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law

The lawsuit is not premature to the extent that 

1. VRSN were told (however justly) to cease and desist Site Finder 1.0 or
else face consequences.

2. VRSN  were told they couldn't implement the "Consolidate" service
without making other concessions [according to the complaint the service
allowed registrants to buy fractions of a year registrations to top up
existing ones so that a whole portfolio would come due on the same day --
a useful feature].

3. ICANN hasn't implemented the parts of the contracts that call
for review panels in cases of disputes.

4. VRSN are looking for leverage to force a favorable outcome in Rome on
WLS or on the forthcoming Sitefinder 2.0 as part of settlement
negotiations if any.

Not, I hasten to add, that I support Sitefinder or WLS (although I think I
like "consolidate").  But what I like isn't the issue.  Even if having
ICANN win some of these is a short-run gain for usability of the Internet,
making ICANN's approval required for every ancillary service or change in
business model of every registry is a serious long-term drag on the
evolution of the Internet.  Although, like all regulatory compliance work,
it would generate serious lawyers' fees

On Thu, 26 Feb 2004, David Schwartz wrote:

>   By the way, do we even know what we're talking about? Specifically, has
> VeriSign produced a set of specifications for exactly what SiteFinder is and
> does?
> 
>   For example, is it guaranteed to return the same A record for all
> unregistered domains? Is it guaranteed that that A record will not change?
> 
>   Until VeriSign produces a technical specification for what it is they
> intend to do, they cannot expect other people to opine about what effects
> their changes will have. VeriSign has not yet even started the notification
> and analysis period.
> 
>   Isn't VeriSign's lawsuit premature? I mean, ICANN has not yet said no to
> any specific technical proposal from VeriSign, at least as far as I know. Is
> VeriSign arguing that they should be able to do whatever they want with the
> root DNS, with no advance notice to anyone?
> 
>   DS
> 
> 
> 

-- 
http://www.icannwatch.org   Personal Blog: http://www.discourse.net
A. Michael Froomkin   |Professor of Law|   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
U. Miami School of Law, P.O. Box 248087, Coral Gables, FL 33124 USA
+1 (305) 284-4285  |  +1 (305) 284-6506 (fax)  |  http://www.law.tm
 -->It's warm here.<--



Re: Lawsuit on ICANN (was: Re: A few words on VeriSign's sitefinder)

2004-02-26 Thread Deepak Jain


Scott Call wrote:

On Thu, 26 Feb 2004, Roman Volf wrote:


When are they up for renewal exactly?


November 10, 2007, according to
http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/verisign/registry-agmt-com-25may01.htm
-S

I think as far as Verisign is concerned, they might not be an ongoing 
concern in 2007, so why worry? They need to do something to get their 
revenues up or risk the wrath of wallstreet: 
http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/040129/tech_verisign_earns_4.html

At $6/year per domain registered, VGRS makes the lion share of money in 
the domain registry business for .com and .net. Yet, they are losing 
$20MM per last quarter (or more, they lost over 200MM in 2003) And only 
have about $300MM in cash . And their revenues are falling.

Deepak Jain
AiNET


RE: Lawsuit on ICANN (was: Re: A few words on VeriSign's sitefinder)

2004-02-26 Thread Randy Bush

> By the way, do we even know what we're talking about?

that is not needed to flame folk such as verisign.  lynch mobs
look pretty good until you are the one on guantanamo.

randy



Re: Lawsuit on ICANN (was: Re: A few words on VeriSign's sitefinder)

2004-02-26 Thread Paul Vixie

[EMAIL PROTECTED] ("william(at)elan.net") writes:

> ...
> And based on that Verisign rule over these tlds ends in November 2007

no.  See page 19 of:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID475281_code70168.pdf?abstractid=475281

i think that verisign and icann are stuck with each other, in perpetuity.
-- 
Paul Vixie


Re: Lawsuit on ICANN (was: Re: A few words on VeriSign's sitefinder)

2004-02-26 Thread william(at)elan.net

On Thu, 26 Feb 2004, John Kinsella wrote:

> > > When are they up for renewal exactly?
> > November 10, 2007, according
>
> Any way to speed that up? ;)

http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/verisign/registry-agmt-com-25may01.htm

"16. Termination
 ...
 B. In the event of termination by DOC of its Cooperative Agreement with 
Registry Operator pursuant to Section 1.B.8 of Amendment ___ to that 
Agreement, ICANN shall, after receiving express notification of that fact 
from DOC and a request from DOC to terminate Registry Operator as the 
operator of the Registry TLD, terminate Registry Operator's rights under 
this Agreement, and shall cooperate with DOC to facilitate the transfer of 
the operation of the Registry Database to a successor registry

 C. This Agreement may also be terminated in the by ICANN on written 
notice given at least forty days after the final and nonappealable 
occurrence of either of the following events:
(i) Registry Operator:
 (a) is convicted by a court of competent jurisdiction of a felony or other 
 serious offense related to financial activities, or is the subject of a 
 determination by a court of competent jurisdiction that ICANN reasonably 
 deems as the substantive equivalent of those offenses ; or
 (b) is disciplined by the government of its domicile for conduct involving 
 dishonesty or misuse of funds of others
ii) Any officer or director of Registry Operator is convicted of a felony 
 or of a misdemeanor related to financial activities, or is judged by a 
 court to have committed fraud or breach of fiduciary duty, or is the 
 subject of a judicial determination that ICANN deems as the substantive 
 equivalent of any of these"


So all we need to do is either lobby us government (get to your senator or 
congressman; and before Verisign starts lobbying him directly) or get federal
courts to convict the people at Verisign responsible for all this mess.

--
William Leibzon
Elan Networks
[EMAIL PROTECTED]



Re: Lawsuit on ICANN (was: Re: A few words on VeriSign's sitefinder)

2004-02-26 Thread John Kinsella

Any way to speed that up? ;)

John

On Thu, Feb 26, 2004 at 03:57:12PM -0800, Scott Call wrote:
> On Thu, 26 Feb 2004, Roman Volf wrote:
> > When are they up for renewal exactly?
> November 10, 2007, according to
> http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/verisign/registry-agmt-com-25may01.htm


Re: Lawsuit on ICANN (was: Re: A few words on VeriSign's sitefinder)

2004-02-26 Thread william(at)elan.net


For ICANN/Registry agreements see here:
 http://www.icann.org/registries/agreements.htm

Specific agreements & all technical specs Verisign agreed to follow:
 http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/verisign/com-index.htm
 http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/verisign/net-index.htm

And based on that Verisign rule over these tlds ends in November 2007

On Thu, 26 Feb 2004, Roman Volf wrote:

> 
> When are they up for renewal exactly?
> 
> william(at)elan.net wrote:
> 
> >On Thu, 26 Feb 2004, Deepak Jain wrote:
> >  
> >
> >>Since no one else has mentioned this:
> >>
> >>http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/040226/tech_verisign_2.html
> >>
> >>
> >
> >And I'm sure ICANN will remember it for long time - right up to the point 
> >when Verisign's contracts for .com/.net management are up for renewal.



Re: Lawsuit on ICANN (was: Re: A few words on VeriSign's sitefinder)

2004-02-26 Thread Roman Volf
When are they up for renewal exactly?

william(at)elan.net wrote:

On Thu, 26 Feb 2004, Deepak Jain wrote:
 

Since no one else has mentioned this:

http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/040226/tech_verisign_2.html
   

And I'm sure ICANN will remember it for long time - right up to the point 
when Verisign's contracts for .com/.net management are up for renewal.

 




Re: Lawsuit on ICANN (was: Re: A few words on VeriSign's sitefinder)

2004-02-26 Thread william(at)elan.net

On Thu, 26 Feb 2004, Deepak Jain wrote:
> 
> Since no one else has mentioned this:
> 
> http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/040226/tech_verisign_2.html

And I'm sure ICANN will remember it for long time - right up to the point 
when Verisign's contracts for .com/.net management are up for renewal.

-- 
William Leibzon
Elan Networks
[EMAIL PROTECTED]




Re: Lawsuit on ICANN (was: Re: A few words on VeriSign's sitefinder)

2004-02-26 Thread John Neiberger

 Neil J. McRae <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 2/26/04 3:03:52 PM >>>
>
>> http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/040226/tech_verisign_2.html 
>
>can't say I'm surprised. Another nail in the Verisign coffin.

They must have taken a page from the recently-released book "How to Shoot Your Company 
in the Foot," by SCO.

*
John

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RE: Lawsuit on ICANN (was: Re: A few words on VeriSign's sitefinder)

2004-02-27 Thread Stephen J. Wilcox

> Not, I hasten to add, that I support Sitefinder or WLS (although I think I
> like "consolidate").  But what I like isn't the issue.  Even if having

Just to recap here, this thread plus the articles I'm reading miss one of the 
major points (a commercial one essentialy).. 

Verisign is really two entities wrt .com/net - it is the registry and the
registrar. As a registrar it occupies the same position as the many other
registrars.. tucows, melbourne, joker etc .. as a registry it occupies a
privileged position in that it is the only entity responsible for managing and
maintaining the gtld servers and zonefiles.

So, with that in mind, regardless of how beneficial you may think sitefinder is 
it exists to the exclusion and detriment of the other registrars, I just dont 
see how this is justifiable and supports the argument that Verisign is indeed 
abusing its position.

Steve


> ICANN win some of these is a short-run gain for usability of the Internet,
> making ICANN's approval required for every ancillary service or change in
> business model of every registry is a serious long-term drag on the
> evolution of the Internet.  Although, like all regulatory compliance work,
> it would generate serious lawyers' fees
> 
> On Thu, 26 Feb 2004, David Schwartz wrote:
> 
> > By the way, do we even know what we're talking about? Specifically, has
> > VeriSign produced a set of specifications for exactly what SiteFinder is and
> > does?
> > 
> > For example, is it guaranteed to return the same A record for all
> > unregistered domains? Is it guaranteed that that A record will not change?
> > 
> > Until VeriSign produces a technical specification for what it is they
> > intend to do, they cannot expect other people to opine about what effects
> > their changes will have. VeriSign has not yet even started the notification
> > and analysis period.
> > 
> > Isn't VeriSign's lawsuit premature? I mean, ICANN has not yet said no to
> > any specific technical proposal from VeriSign, at least as far as I know. Is
> > VeriSign arguing that they should be able to do whatever they want with the
> > root DNS, with no advance notice to anyone?
> > 
> > DS
> > 
> > 
> > 
> 
> 



RE: Lawsuit on ICANN (was: Re: A few words on VeriSign's sitefinder)

2004-02-27 Thread Mark Jeftovic


On Fri, 27 Feb 2004, Stephen J. Wilcox wrote:
> Verisign is really two entities wrt .com/net - it is the registry and the
> registrar. As a registrar it occupies the same position as the many other
> registrars.. tucows, melbourne, joker etc .. as a registry it occupies a
> privileged position in that it is the only entity responsible for managing and
> maintaining the gtld servers and zonefiles.
>

Verisign sold off NetSol to Pivotal Private Equity last year for 100
million, which takes them out of the registrar space and leaves them
as the registry.

-mark

-- 
Mark Jeftovic <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Co-founder, easyDNS Technologies Inc.
ph. +1-(416)-535-8672 ext 225
fx. +1-(416)-535-0237


Re: Lawsuit on ICANN (was: Re: A few words on VeriSign's sitefinder)

2004-02-27 Thread Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine

> Verisign is really two entities wrt .com/net - it is the registry and the
> registrar.

Verisign Registrar, aka Network Solutions, was sold off to Pivotal Private
Equity last Fall.

Other lines of analysis to attempt:

o what are "registry services" and what are not.

o if a "registry services", is the plan of record consistent with
  equal access to all operational registrars? to all accredited
  registrars?

o is the feature a "surprise", and is it a noxious "surprise"?
  hint: consulting the non-feature user base is allowed.

o is the feature protocol-independent or is it protocol-specific,
  and if specific, is that a "good thing"?

The point of this interposition on a query is enablement of a
provisioning sale and subsequent downstream sales of name service,
site hosting, bandwidth, digital certificats, turn-key solutions,
etc.

o would it matter if interposition on the query were performed
  at the browser? at the access ISP? at any nameserver?
  hint: see my prior notes on China, a Unicode bug in the IE
  navbar, and transpac flow for clue.

I think I'll go have coffee. Basically everyone capable of steering traffic
who can detect interposition or the opportunity to interpose and doesn't
steer traffic to their own, not VGRS's retail sales, should either do a deal
with VGRS's wholesale, or waive "bye bye" to all the things you could do
(appologies to Dr. Seuss).

This just in on another list, I haven't read them all (but I did check,
and the WaPo's David McGuire did use "hieroglyphics" when writing about
writing Chinese. Must be one of those covert signaling channels between
Washington and Beijing.)

* From the Associated Press (by Anick Jesdanun, staff):

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/national/8050595.htm
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/technology/8050595.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Internet-Oversight.html

Includes quotes or attributions from:

Jonathan Weinberg, law professor, Wayne State University
Kieran Baker, ICANN spokesman (no comment)
Michael Froomkin, law professor, University of Miami
Tom Galvin, vice president of government relations, VeriSign

* From ZDNet (by Declan McCullagh, CNet):

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-5165982.html

Includes quotes or attributions from:

Galvin
Froomkin
John Jeffrey, ICANN general counsel (not reached)

* From Reuters (newer, by Andy Sullivan, staff)

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?storyID=4449883

Includes quotes or attributions from:

Galvin
Derek Newman, Seattle lawyer

* From the Washington Post (by David McGuire, staff):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9415-2004Feb26

Includes quotes or attributions from:

Galvin
Mark Lewyn, chairman, Paxfire Inc.
Baker (no comment)
Stratton Sclavos, VeriSign chief executive

* From Slashdot:

http://slashdot.org/articles/04/02/26/235256.shtml

Anyone else going to Rome?

Eric


Re: Lawsuit on ICANN (was: Re: A few words on VeriSign's sitefinder)

2004-02-27 Thread Michael Painter

http://techupdate.zdnet.com/special_report/Stratton_Sclavos.html


Re: Lawsuit on ICANN (was: Re: A few words on VeriSign's sitefinder)

2004-02-28 Thread Paul Vixie

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Mark Jeftovic) writes:

> Verisign sold off NetSol to Pivotal Private Equity last year for 100
> million, which takes them out of the registrar space and leaves them
> as the registry.

it'll be several quarters, and one audited annual report, before we'll
know how much control (in terms of supervoting, buyback rights, and so
on) verisign still has over netsol.  the fact that they aren't the owners
of record of that segment of their business is not particularly relevant.

now that there's a lawsuit filed, icann could subpoena the details and
discover verisign's continuing rights in the matter of netsol's futures.
-- 
Paul Vixie