The lawsuit is not premature to the extent that 1. VRSN were told (however justly) to cease and desist Site Finder 1.0 or else face consequences. 2. VRSN were told they couldn't implement the "Consolidate" service without making other concessions [according to the complaint the service allowed registrants to buy fractions of a year registrations to top up existing ones so that a whole portfolio would come due on the same day -- a useful feature]. 3. ICANN hasn't implemented the parts of the contracts that call for review panels in cases of disputes. 4. VRSN are looking for leverage to force a favorable outcome in Rome on WLS or on the forthcoming Sitefinder 2.0 as part of settlement negotiations if any. Not, I hasten to add, that I support Sitefinder or WLS (although I think I like "consolidate"). But what I like isn't the issue. Even if having ICANN win some of these is a short-run gain for usability of the Internet, making ICANN's approval required for every ancillary service or change in business model of every registry is a serious long-term drag on the evolution of the Internet. Although, like all regulatory compliance work, it would generate serious lawyers' fees.... On Thu, 26 Feb 2004, David Schwartz wrote:

By the way, do we even know what we're talking about? Specifically, has VeriSign produced a set of specifications for exactly what SiteFinder is and does?

For example, is it guaranteed to return the same A record for all unregistered domains? Is it guaranteed that that A record will not change?

Until VeriSign produces a technical specification for what it is they intend to do, they cannot expect other people to opine about what effects their changes will have. VeriSign has not yet even started the notification and analysis period.

Isn't VeriSign's lawsuit premature? I mean, ICANN has not yet said no to any specific technical proposal from VeriSign, at least as far as I know. Is VeriSign arguing that they should be able to do whatever they want with the root DNS, with no advance notice to anyone?

DS

-- http://www.icannwatch.org Personal Blog: http://www.discourse.net A. Michael Froomkin | Professor of Law | froomkin@law.tm U. Miami School of Law, P.O. Box 248087, Coral Gables, FL 33124 USA +1 (305) 284-4285 | +1 (305) 284-6506 (fax) | http://www.law.tm -->It's warm here.<--

On Fri, 27 Feb 2004, Stephen J. Wilcox wrote:

Verisign is really two entities wrt .com/net - it is the registry and the registrar. As a registrar it occupies the same position as the many other registrars.. tucows, melbourne, joker etc .. as a registry it occupies a privileged position in that it is the only entity responsible for managing and maintaining the gtld servers and zonefiles.

Verisign sold off NetSol to Pivotal Private Equity last year for 100 million, which takes them out of the registrar space and leaves them as the registry. -mark -- Mark Jeftovic <markjr@easydns.com> Co-founder, easyDNS Technologies Inc. ph. +1-(416)-535-8672 ext 225 fx. +1-(416)-535-0237

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

By the way, do we even know what we're talking about?

that is not needed to flame folk such as verisign. lynch mobs look pretty good until you are the one on guantanamo. randy