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Re: [ga] VeriSign May Ditch Domain Deal
The bloody SPAM is enough by itself. And as an attorney, I know
how "Chinese walls" work -- they don't. How it was that "marketing"
ever got into the purely technical issue of running a root and recording
domain name registrations is beyond me, except for the fact that NSI
has NEVER done anything without first thought to its bottom line.
The "examples" pertinent to this issue itself are of course within
the walls
of Verisign, so I would invite you to provide any examples which show
that anything I have suggested is not true. Hawking and registering
domain
names is a marketing function, with a bit of techno-bit twiddling attached;
running a registry of who has registered what so that the DNS function
can be authoritatively carried out is pure techno-bookkeeping, and
should
never be found in the same basket as marketing. They are philosophically
different functions that have an inherent conflict of interest, and
any mix of
them is quite anti-competitive in that every registration then ultimately
ends
up with the registry, thereby giving that registry an unfair advantage
in its
own hawking efforts if it is permitted then to tout its own registration
services
as to every conceivable variation of a "hot" name, which Verisign (and,
e.g.,
register.com, but you see register.com does not have the whole pile
as does
Verisign) does interminably. I am not an antitrust lawyer, but
I've studied
it, and I was not born yesterday.
Rumor has it that Verisign has also tracked WHOIS queries, and when
one
looks like a "hot" one (read "marketable") it has immediately snatched
it up
for itself, and although this also seems to be the practice in a lot
of other places,
a look at the domain names that Verisign/NSI has registered to itself
would
make it among the biggest, if not the biggest, cybersquatter on the
net (were it
not for the loophole in the law that exempts registrars from that law
-- a
loophole about which I would like to know -- and intend to find out
-- just
how much Verisign/NSI had a hand in getting into that abominable law.
Chuck, no one out here with half a brain can fail to figure out what
Verisign/NSI -- of whom I am forced against my will to be a customer
if I'm to have a domain name -- does. Verisign/NSI past practices have,
I suspect, conditioned a good bit of the public to accept at once the
idea
that Verisign/NSI would in fact be carrying out exactly what I've said.
And thank you for the email; it has moved me to respond, and suggested
that, since this issue is before the Congress right now, I should immediately
copy this whole thing off to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), so excuse me
while I take care of that chore. Maybe that will help put an end to
this
farce.
Bill Lovell
"Gomes, Chuck" wrote:
Bill,Please
give me an example that proves that the current separation between Registry
and Registrar does not work.Chuck
Well, let's hope so. To begin with, paper work "separation" between
registry and registrar
functions has always been a gross fiction -- it never works and should
never have been
contemplated. What do you think happens when the registry type says
to the registrar type,
"Let's do lunch?" I never deal directly with NSI (Verisign) in registering
a domain name,
but only when the necessary paper work trickles out of my registration
application to some
other registrar.
Even so, I guess that makes me a "customer" of Verisign and gives them
a crack in the law
that allows them to send me their SPAM. That's one reason why there's
an incompatibility
between registry and registrar functions -- registries should twiddle
bits, and that's all --
a registry should be hawking nothing. (For our nonUSA people
to whom the slang term
"hawking" is not familiar, it just means aggressive marketing and that
sort of thing.)
(Once our current more important issues get resolved, SPAM, privacy,
security, etc., will
be my next projects.)
(The concession in par. 2 below solves nothing as to the problem in
par. 1.)
Bill Lovell
Bruce James wrote:
""The major sticking
point arose from a letter that the Justice Department sent to the Department
of Commerce warning that the deal would harm competition in the nascent
business of registering Internet names, people familiar with the negotiations
said. The letter opposed the so-called vertical integration of VeriSign's
managing of the ".com" database and registering new names in the database,
sources said.""
""Commerce officials were said to be asking for more
concessions from VeriSign, such as giving up control of the ".net" domain
sooner than 2005.""
/Bruce
----- Original Message -----
Sent: May 16, 2001 07:46
Subject: [ga] VeriSign May Ditch Domain
Deal
VeriSign May Ditch Domain Deal
By Aaron Pressman
May
15 2001 04:57 PM PDT
The Commerce Department's review of
the agreement that extends the computer security firm's control of the
'.com' domain has the company thinking twice, sources say.
MORE at:
http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,24500,00.html
/Bruce
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