Verisign's public opinion play

Tue Oct 7 13:10:52 UTC 2003

At 10:27 AM +0100 10/7/03, Michael.Dillon at radianz.com wrote:
>  >I think this list may be a very good choice of where to construct
>>such a response.
>
>Are you being paid by Verisign?

A disclaimer seems appropriate -- right now, I'm being only 
occasionally paid for consulting by clients not having anything to do 
with Verisign.

>A "constructed" response is the worst thing we could
>do. Everyone should write their own responses in their
>own words based on their own experiences or their own
>skills and knowledge. That's the only way to demonstrate
>that Verisign was wrong, wrong, wrong.
>
>A "constructed" response is pure politics and only
>demonstrates that a certain opinion is shared by
>a bunch of people with no basis in fact. We don't
>need to trumpet our opinions; we need to document and
>publish the facts of the matter.
>
>And this list is definitely not the place to
>discuss writing a letter of protest. If political
>activity is your bag, then try http://www.meetup.com

Writing a "constructed" response, I would agree, should either come 
through an already existing group (e.g., IETF/IAB), or from an ad hoc 
organization, which, in this context, MUST have a truly open process.

That being said, writing something, even as an individual, which 
strikes the interest of news media is not necessarily a skill 
everyone here has. I do have some background in this, and would be 
happy to work with a team, and with individuals to the extent my time 
permits.  It's important to get this out of a perspective of 
"regulator versus poor persecuted Verisign". versus technically 
perfect analyses, a product of an open process, that are 
incomprehensible or at least uninteresting to a nonspecialist 
reporter, Congressional staffer, etc.

When you start to write anything, may I suggest one of the things you 
have to keep at the front of your mind is that many of your audience, 
outside the engineering community, equate the Web and the Internet. 
This isn't stupidity, it's lack of knowledge.  They have to realize 
that an ISP can be the point of access to non-public yet critical 
services, such as being the entry point for VPNs for anything from 
credit authorization to secure medical reporting.

I hope to get to at least part of the ICANN meeting -- unfortunately, 
I had an uncomfortable night -- both a cat circus on the bed and 
using some unfamiliar muscles yesterday and resulting in a painful 
back -- so I'm now running on 3-4 hours of sleep.  Ah, for the days 
when the Internet was young and I could get by with that much 
sleep...;-)