Verisign to sell Network Solutions

Thu Oct 16 16:50:00 UTC 2003



--On Thursday, October 16, 2003 5:08 PM +0100 Michael.Dillon at 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