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