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

Fri Feb 27 13:29:06 UTC 2004

> 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