[ga] Verisign spamming domain name registrants??

[George Kirikos <gkirikos@yahoo.com>]

Hello,

According to the ICANN Board's WLS decision (which is subject to
ongoing appeals, however):

"(d) ...there shall be an effective mechanism for actively notifying
the current domain-name holder upon the placing of a WLS subscription
on the name..."

(from http://www.icann.org/minutes/prelim-report-02jun03.htm )

If that notification is provided by email, doesn't that constitute
Unsolicited Bulk Email? Certainly Verisign has no pre-existing business
relationship with a significant number of the folks who would receive
those notifications. Many want nothing to do with Verisign. It shall be
interesting to see how residents of Washington and other strong
anti-spam states will react, when they can take Verisign to court for
possibly spamming them, or whether the "real-time blocking systems"
will "BlackHole" Verisign's servers for spamming.

As resellers and registrars, we'll need to explain to *our* clients
exactly what these notifications mean, raising our support costs. Will
we be compensated in any way by Verisign? And, most of us value our
time at more than what Verisign pays its "world class" support
personnel in the Philippines....

Anyone who has had experience with the various companies who send out
phony renewals notices knows exactly what I'm talking about.
Furthermore, clients will assume that *we* provided their contact
details for these unsolicited messages, which in many ways constitute
crafty marketing. A client who owns more than one domain might feel
*compelled* to purchase "protective" WLS subscriptions due to the Fear,
Uncertainty and Doubt created by receiving a notification that someone
anonymous has purchased a WLS subscription on one of their names. If
you received an official-looking notification in the mail that someone
had bought a life insurance policy that paid them $1,000,000 if *your*
house burned down, wouldn't you be asking a lot of questions, and
possibly taking precautions to protect yourself and your loved ones?

Furthermore, Verisign does not even know what language(s) the domain
registrants prefer correspondence, as they have no business
relationship with the registrant. A client who does not understand
English will easily be confused by the meaning of a notification sent
by Verisign about their domain name if it is sent only in English. They
might even wonder if their Registrar has gone out of business,
wondering why they are receiving mail from Verisign instead. Some
clients might even be visually impaired, and need correspondence in
Braille. With no pre-existing business relationship, Verisign will not
know these things, paying attention to the important "localizations"
that registrars and resellers do day-in and day-out for *their*
clients.

It is even possible that Verisign will send these "notifications" by
regular postal mail, instead of e-mail. I think many registrars will
not appreciate having Verisign contacting their clients by mail, and
will be accused by numerous clients of having sold their contact
details for bulk mailings. Verisign has been in trouble in the past for
sending out deceptive mail, for instance 

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,101729,00.asp

How does Verisign get around the fact that in order to send
notifications, they will likely need to mine contact details from port
43 WHOIS? That WHOIS, even in bulk form at $10,000 per year (which I
doubt Verisign has purchased from all ICANN-registrars), has stringent
terms of use forbidding unsolicited bulk use, except for its own
customers. With Verisign and its partners projecting millions of WLS
subscriptions, I think that qualifies as "bulk", and a significant
chunk of those are *not* Verisign customers.

Any other party who mined WHOIS to send out informational notices, such
as political messages, warnings to boycott various companies (e.g. 10
million emails saying "Verisign sucks!" or "ICANN Rules" (as if...))
would be in hot water. How is it Verisign receives preferential
treatment, vis-a-vis others who wish to send out comparable
"information notices"?? 

Is it because there's a "consensus policy" ordering Registrars to abide
by WLS, and turn a blind eye to the above abuse of their customer data?
As ICANN's response to the Dotster Reconsideration Request admitted:

http://www.icann.org/committees/reconsideration/rc02-5.htm

there *is* no consensus policy *for* WLS. Indeed, there was a consensus
vote *against* WLS. Somehow ICANN thought they can sneak this through,
violating consensus, but their admission of violating consensus will
come back to haunt them and Verisign soon enough...

I think ICANN and Verisign can expect to see challenges soon based on
the above, as part of broader attacks on WLS which will include
anti-trust and violation of registrar contracts, in order to protect
consumers and registrars from this violation of the Consensus Policy
against WLS that ICANN's Board ignored, at their own peril.

Sincerely,

George Kirikos
http://www.kirikos.com/
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