Re: [ga] Verisign stock price falls off a cliff

[Andy Gardner <andy@navigator.co.nz>]

At 1:36 AM -0400 4/28/02, Sotiris Sotiropoulos wrote:
>Well, Dan, here's what Stratton Sclavos had to say:
>
>"The sustained technology downturn definitely caught up with us," Chief
>Executive Stratton Sclavos told analysts in a conference call after the
>markets closed Thursday, citing a contraction in its domain name
>business <http://news.com.com/2100-1023-826603.html> which provides
>addresses for Internet sites."

It's not the technology down turn that caught up with them - the base
"technology" sector still requires pretty much the same number of domains
as before.

What caught up with them was:

1. Giving away net/org domains under a "protect your name" scam, putting
them on the books as sales, and having to delete the lot when the
registrants see through the scam and don't bother renewing at their
inflating registration fees.

2. Giving speculators  credit to register speculative names, only to find
said speculators couldn't unload the names, didn't want to renew them and
couldn't pay their account at NSI. Just one speculator unearthed involved
more than 1 million dollars worth of unpaid credit (a Belgian doctor), and
saw NSI attempting to recover their costs by selling the names through a
special account at their "Great Domains" auction site. Very few sold at the
"special price" would required a 2 year registration through NSI. Other
cases were in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. And there were probably
thousands of smaller cases that added up to a fair amount as well. I wonder
if the shareholders ever got to read about that little cock-up in the
financial statements?

3. Then there's their latest little game to try and take the seam out of
.biz by offering the near-equivalent .bz (belize). After buying the rights
to that ccTLD, I think the dollar signs in Verisign's eyes disappeared when
the results of their big domain sale via eBay came in:
http://www.stores.ebay.com/store=47260199  computers/bz and gay.bz for only
$10,000. WHAT A BARGAIN. All those expensive names and no bids. One must
wonder how much they paid for the rights to .bz? Another profit centre that
looks like it's going to be debt item for Verisign. And do the shareholders
know about it? Not bloody likely!

Note that Verisign has zero user feedback becuase so far it's failed to
make a sale (all those names are now onto their second auction attempt).
$10000 to register a name - is Verisign trying to be like idealabs?

4. Then there's their recent postal-fraud attempt at sending out disguised
invoices with domain transfer terms hidden in the small print.

5. And there's all the sideline ideas the registry is trying to run to try
and keep their finger in all the pies - keywords, IDN, webnumbers, phone
registries. Pulllease.

6. And the continued attempts to block transfers out of their registrar.

7. And the continued ineptness that sees people lose their domains on a
daily basis due to NSI's billing database mess.

When the shareholder finally see these guys for what they really are and it
turns into a penny stock, is ICANN ready to rescue the registry system and
assign it to a company that is happy to be the C/N registry, do it well,
and not get sidetracked into the other bullshit? THAT should be a security
requirement for the largest registry on the planet.

Wkae up ICANN! All your corporate funders are going down the toilet! TIme
to actually start doing something, rather than just feathering your nest
with your projected revenues!

-- 
Andrew P. Gardner
barcelona.com stolen, stmoritz.com stays. What's uniform about the UDRP?
We could ask ICANN to send WIPO a clue, but do they have any to spare?
Get active: http://www.tldlobby.com
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