Verisign suggestion

Thu Sep 18 12:15:36 UTC 2003

In a message written on Thu, Sep 18, 2003 at 12:25:48AM -0400, Gerald wrote:
> They don't pay a thing for all of these domains that they are now
> accepting queries for. It would seem to me to our benefit as an Internet
> community to word this in our favor and send Verisign a bill for
> manipulating their monopoly on the .net and .com zones. My suggestion:

I've seen a lot of knee-jerk responses on the list to this issue,
but this one is the first idea I think actually holds up to more
detailed inspection.

Domain speculators have been registering typos for years, paying
money for them, and redirecting you to all sorts of things.  While
this may not win them any friends it is generally accepted.  Verisign
can now do that without paying for each mistyped domain, giving
them a huge (economic) advantage. [Note: yes, there are technical
advantages, like they get everything with one record, but money
talks.]

Now, as much as I hate ICANN, I do think they are entitled to their
cut of each one of these domains.  If I worked at ICANN I would
write a script to "find" domains, show that some large number of
gTLD's respond, and then show Verisign only paid for a fraction of
that number.  Verisign's liability here is huge, if you just assume
36 characters (a-z0-9) and 64 character long domain names you could
charge them for 36^64 domains.

I strongly encourage ICANN to bill them for all the domains they
are now redirecting (eg, all mathematically possible, more detailed
analysis required), and for the domain speculators who've been
registering for years to sue them for unfair monopolistic practices,
or something, since they clearly have an unfair advantage.  Heck,
you might even be able to get an injunction against them pretty
quick.

-- 
       Leo Bicknell - bicknell at ufp.org - CCIE 3440
        PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
Read TMBG List - tmbg-list-request at tmbg.org, www.tmbg.org
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