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VeriSign and Other Registry Giants Blast ICANN 166

Posted by timothy from the struggle-in-the-primordial-soup dept.
rhwalker22 writes: "VeriSign, ENIC, and Nominet UK today released a letter to the U.S. Commerce Dept. urging Uncle Sam to 'scale back the powers of the body that manages the Internet's global addressing system,' according to this report on washingtonpost.com. ICANN, of course, has its own take on the Registries' letter..."
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VeriSign and Other Registry Giants Blast ICANN More

VeriSign and Other Registry Giants Blast ICANN

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  • Verisign ?? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by charon_on_acheron ( 519983 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @04:31PM (#3994709) Homepage
    So after they make a fortune because of the ICANN does business, they want to change it so they can rape another group of customers?

    They are not the ones I would listen to for policy changes.
    • I think it says something that even the guys who were abusing ICANN to get rich, can't stand ICANN's practices any longer. There comes a point where even the filthy rich tire of holding their noses...
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • No, I am not condoning ICANN either. I just don't want the government to take Verisign at face value. The fact that ICANN let Verisign be the bastards they are condemns them. But making ICANN a toothless figurehead won't hurt Verisign at all. It will just validate their business strategy.
        • You folks shouldn't judge that intiative based on your disdain of Verisign.

          Others have already commented on Nominet's non-profit structure.

          DENIC operates under the very strict German rules of a "licensed cooperative". Every ISP (a few simple technical criteria determine what an ISP is) is entitled membership in this cooperative, it has a clear, open fee structure and has served the German internet community extraordinary well for last few years. It may not be a model for ICANN itself (since there is no real user involvement) but it certainly is a model for an effective, community driven registrar.

          When ICANN's Stuart Lynn comments (from the article):
          A registry by definition has a monopoly, so they all have a common interest in preserving individual monopolistic practices, so they don't want to be accountable to anybody," Lynn said.

          Registry operators like VeriSign, DENIC and Nominet wield substantial power over valuable, limited resources, Lynn said. ICANN maintains the only real check on those powers, he added.
          he is purposefully distorting the truth with respect to Nominet and DENIC

    • Re:Verisign ?? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by tagishsimon ( 175038 )
      The fact that Nominet [nominet.net] signed, kind of invalidates your argument.

      Nominet is a not-for-profit company; charges circa $7 per two years; publishes its accounts; is the model of transparacy that ICANN is not ... indeed, is something like ICANN's mirror image.

      When a very well run common-good organisation such as Nominet speaks on an issue like this, it behoves us to listen.

      • Re:Verisign ?? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by blowdart ( 31458 )

        And yet this is the same Nominet who is riding rough shod over user's objections [nominet-no.co.uk] to showing full addresses and phone numbers on whois on all of .uk (including .me.uk - supposed to be for individuals), the same nominet who has a shed load of money in the bank [google.com], who don't publish accounts [google.com] and has hidden companies [google.com], the same nominet who can take 4 months to respond to emails, and who, in my case took 2.5 years to transfer a domain I purchased into my name.

        Nominet is not run for the common good, nor are they transparent.

        • And yet this is the same Nominet who is riding rough shod over user's objections to showing full addresses and phone numbers on whois on all of .uk

          I thought that's what whois is for so you can contact the people responsible for a domain.

        • Re:Verisign ?? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Hope Thelps ( 322083 )
          And yet this is the same Nominet who is riding rough shod over user's objections [nominet-no.co.uk] to showing full addresses and phone numbers on whois on all of .uk (including .me.uk - supposed to be for individuals), the same nominet who has a shed load of money in the bank [google.com], who don't publish accounts [google.com] and has hidden companies [google.com],

          Showing full contact details on whois seems perfectly reasonable. In fact I thought this was standard practice although perhaps I was mistaken. Certainly it's common in other forms of public register.

          Your link re having "a shed load of money in the bank" makes no reference at all to the amount of money they have in the bank. I guess you meant to use a different link here because you seem to have used the same one three times. How much is "a shed load" in this case?

          It's quite common for non-profit companies to be limited by guarantee. I don't think there's anything odd about that. The link you gave (again it's the one that's used multiple times so probably just a mistake) doesn't give any information on why you regard them as "hidden", posibly you could provide the correct link?

          the same nominet who can take 4 months to respond to emails, and who, in my case took 2.5 years to transfer a domain I purchased into my name.

          Well those are serious complaints. I don't understand why you made such a big deal over the earlier points in comparison.

        • Re:Verisign ?? (Score:2, Informative)

          by matthew.thompson ( 44814 )
          OK now I missed this post while running through the thread with my moderator points so I am going to put the record straight at the expense of the two points I used moderating.

          I represent a member of Nominet and recently attended the AGM (Nominet is an organisation limited by garuntee and collectively owned by it's members)

          At the AGM Nominet announced that they were looking into ways to allow individuals to opt-out of public display of whois details and were staggering the introduction of full contact details to the whois output and initially only providing business/organisational addresses (The Nominet registration template includes a space to indicate whether or not your are an organisation or an individual)

          The money in the bank is required to cover the increasing lawsuits faced by not only Nominet as an organisation but also the directors who have in the past been targetted individually.

          The accounts are sitting on my desk and were distributed at the AGM - like most private companies they do not publically distribute accounts and as a non-profit making organisation they do need to be audited and do so annually. The accounts and audit are filed with Companies House annually - whether they are available to the public or not is a matter to bring up with your MP.

          As for hidden companies - they're not hidden they are just there to protect property rights and as such are non-operating. This is standard business practice in the UK. My own company has to have a different name because another company has registered the name I wish to use as it dounds like their trading name. There is nothing illegal about this.

          Nominet are not transparent but neither is government. Nominet do attempt to run themselves for the common good as I know a few of the members involved in the running and policy making of Nominet and they give a hell of a lot of their personal time, often withough payment, to try and make Nominet even better than it already is.

          M@t :O)
      • Nominet seems to be quite the socialist organization (that's a good thing for all you capitalists), and it is a shame that they are thrown into the same ring as ICANN and VeriSign. Should ICANN itself have been run in this fashion, there would not be this problem.

        And even though you state that Nominet signed invalidates the argument, giving this power to Nominet has the potential to be good, but giving this power to Verisign had great potential to be bad.

        Would I run down a nice guy to hit the six bastards lined up behind him? Damn Skippy I would!

        AWG

        But I'd try not to kill him...
        • Any centralized point of control will be grabbed by those more interested in the power than in the purported function. During it's first years ICANN was a decent organization. Then it gradually became the property of a group of power hungry individuals.

          The problem is a structure that puts a single group in such a dominant position. If you merely replace the dominant group, you will only achieve a temporary remission of the problem, and you will destroy whatever group you thrust into the central position. The solution is to disperse the power. So have .org be run by a separate body, but don't think that solves the problem. Remember to take the next step, and create other domain registries. Have each country run it's own. Have a rule that says one organization can only run one .... not domain, can't think of the word. .org, .com, .edu, etc. And then create a method where new registeries can be added. For a start, allow any two or three letter suffix to be claimed by some registry. Some have already been claimed, and let them remain. Canada gets to keep .ca, the US gets to keep .us, etc., but someone is allowed to claim the .xt registry, e.g. And all the three letter registries can be claimed, also. But no group can claim more than one. And this needs to be interpreted in a rather inclusive manner. If one company is owned by another, and another company is owned by the same company, then only one of those three companies is allowed to claim a registry. Even if the ownership is as low as 25%. And if this happen via a acquisition or merger, then one of them is forced to sell. They can choose which, but they only have a limited time, after which they loose all of them.

          Centralization of control needs to be avoided, even at the cost of a significant amount of inconvenience.

  • Back that up Please... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Uttles ( 324447 )
    So where's the link to ICANN's take on the letter?

  • Which you won't be able to see... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Gorm the DBA ( 581373 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @04:35PM (#3994732) Journal
    "ICANN, of course, has its own take on the Registries' letter..."

    Which you'll only be able to examine after a long lawsuit, and you won't be able to copy or leak to anyone without a 10 day opportunity for injunction.

    Judging from their financial records history at least....

  • ICANN leaders have "very, very creatively interpreted their authority to get into areas they were never authorized to get into," ICANN is very very evil and I really really don't like them.
    • No, "evil" is something else. ICANN leaders are just unprincipled.

    • Sadly, it's hard to trust any organization these days, not just the government and businesses. Any org/gov/bus only has one purpose: to live on, to expand, to survive.

      Traditionally, we've knocked the big boys, M$, US gov, ect., but only because they've succeeded and have more clout, making us vulnerable. the reality is, almost any business would run the same way as M$, given the chance and the resources.

      ICANN has a 'purpose'. To manage the Internet. sure, they may not have ideas that correspond to our own, but they don't need to. all they need to do to survive is to be able to use their self proscribed purpose to get donations and support from those who can keep the organization working. Really, they'd do just as much as Worldcom did, if they were pushed to it, in order to survive

      So, while i wouldn't trust the ACLU with everything political, economical, social, ect, about the internet, i think that they're a necessary evil. if there is no central body to govern the internet, that fact will be exploited by those who have the power to do so (corporations instead of gov't... very bad)Perhaps, they most likely surmise, they can get some computer geeks to contribute to their causes, and can thus do the 'right thing'. although, they seem to have forgotten that recently in not allowing inernet voting (though, M$ has been known to rig those)

      it's all business when you look at it. that's why i'm in engineering; i hate business ethics

      • I have to disagree with one part of your post.

        "the reality is, almost any business would run the same way as M$, given the chance and the resources. "

        This is untrue. Most businesses in the US are considered 'small business'. They have a few employees, up to a couple hundred employees. They may be run from the owner's home, or have a storefront, or several locations in an area. These businesses have the same chance and resources that Bill Gates and company had in the early 80's.

        The difference is most of these companies are run by people with a conscience. They have decided to conduct their business ethically, treat their customers well, and not use business deals as stepping stones to vast wealth and power. (The rest are run by incompetent people who, though greedy and unethical, are too stupid or lazy to actually follow Bill's lead. ;^P )

        While we see many stories of the corrupt big business, and think that is how MOST business are run, we tend to forget that MOST businesses never hit the media radar because they are too small to matter. And while the owners would like to be bigger, they aren't going to cut their competitor's throat to get more business.

        Maybe the fact small businesses usually are not incorporated and have no public stock also plays a part in it. No need to hide financial matters like non-profitability from stock-holders.

        • The difference is most of these companies are run by people with a conscience. They have decided to conduct their business ethically, treat their customers well, and not use business deals as stepping stones to vast wealth and power. (The rest are run by incompetent people who, though greedy and unethical, are too stupid or lazy to actually follow Bill's lead. ;^P )

          You seem to give too much credit to humanity

      • Re:Very very... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by GigsVT ( 208848 )
        The reality is, almost any business would run the same way as M$.

        Bullshit.

        There are plenty of examples of companies with firm ethical backgrounds. Big companies, sucessful companies.

        Competing by offering a better product instead of using your huge bank account to absorb losses and drive your competitors out of business is the way most companies operate. MS is the exception and not the rule.
        • There are plenty of examples of companies with firm ethical backgrounds. Big companies, sucessful companies.

          Really? In the United States? Who?? And are they still around? Or have they been bought up by some other larger, unethical company (like Phillip Morris).

          Please back up your assertion.

    • i don't particularly care for ICANN either, but in regards to what this article is about i basically support them.

      Verisign and the other registrars want control over how much they can charge per domain instead of being capped.

      VeriSign runs dot-com, dot-net and dot-org under agreements with ICANN that prevent VeriSign from raising the wholesale price of the addresses it sells ($6), or substantially changing the way it runs the domains.

      how much you think they would want to charge for their Ultra-Premium DOT.COM domains if they were free to choose their own rates... they made their deal to charge that price, let em stick with it

  • Passive Resistance (Score:5, Insightful)

    by man_ls ( 248470 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @04:35PM (#3994740)
    What would the consequences be of Verisign, InterNIC, and the like addressing providers simply ignoring ICANN?

    ICANN doesn't have physical control of any servers. They can legislate away but if the regulations they impose are so far fetched that nobody will impliment them, they've got no real power.

    I don't think the USDoC would care that much, either, honestly.

  • Free Clue to ICANN... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @04:37PM (#3994749)
    Free clue to ICANN: When even spamming, fake-renewal-notice-spewing, domain-slamming scumbag registrars like Verislime aren't afraid to write the Commerce Department and call you scum, you've got problems. ;-)

  • I can just see it happening. (Score:3, Funny)

    by GodInHell ( 258915 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @04:37PM (#3994754) Homepage
    Sir, ICANN has created a rule that favors the Public Good over their corporate sponsors.

    Good GOD man! You there! Take the chopper and go swine hunting, You over there, start taking bids on subteranean cold food storage.

    ---------

    Or maybe we can all just put our wallets out, bend over, and get it done with.

    -GiH

  • ICANNSIGN (Score:3, Insightful)

    by EdMcMan ( 70171 ) <moo.slashdot2.z.edmcman@xoxy.net> on Thursday August 01, 2002 @04:38PM (#3994764) Homepage Journal
    In a letter to Victory dated today, the trade association representing the European registry operators said that they had worked closely with VeriSign "in reaching a common view of a lightweight ICANN."

    Lovely. So now, Verisign and company are envisioning a new lightweight ICANN that Verisign can push around. This isn't going to be solved until a responsible group takes control, and until Verisign is out of the picture as well.

    • You mean a group of human beings that won't succumb to greed or go mad with power? People like that exists. But they won't get elected/hired because they wouldn't have the experience in lying/cheating/stealing that makes our leaders so lovable.

      • Re:ICANNSIGN (Score:3, Insightful)

        by SirSlud ( 67381 )
        +1 insightful. :)

        Yeah, its frusterating - all the honest people interested in the public good are increasingly being dismissed as bleeding heart liberals incapable of making it in the real world. Cynicism like that is what makes it such a self-fulfilling prophecy for our society. Or at least thats my opinion. Given how much people hate non-winners, those not in the game to win rarely get to weild any power .. hopefully the pendulum will swing at some point and we can start creating accountable public bodies with good intentions again. Unfortunately, it'll take some tolerance to 'losers' that lack that super-Western killer instinct that always ends up being mostly self serving, much to the chagrin of its supporters. Why are people always surprised that when you support an ultra-competative system (nothing wrong with competition, but it shouldnt be the goal in its own right .. people are naturally competative, so no need to try and encourage it), they're only your friend until they've got what they want from you?

        Or am I making something out of nothing again, as I'm known to do? :)

  • Don't trust 'em (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Nanite ( 220404 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @04:38PM (#3994768)
    I'm not a huge fan of ICANN (is anyone?) but I'm distrustful of verisign even more. Anything that Verisign wants is probably not in our best interests. Could this be a power grab?
    • Verisign cheats, as anyone who ever tried to move their domain from Verisign to another group can testify (good luck on that one), but that really means paying $35 per year, instead of some smaller fee. They do perform the other funtions they are supposed to, with only minor interference from their greed.

      Much to my surprise, I find myself agreeing with them about this. ICANN does not seem to work, because they are not impartial, they are in the pockets of big corporate interests, and they don't answer the needs of the majority of internet users.

  • Verisign versus ICANN? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Cutriss ( 262920 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @04:39PM (#3994770) Homepage
    Disclaimer: No, I did not read the article.

    VeriSign, ENIC, and Nominet UK today released a letter to the U.S. Commerce Dept. urging Uncle Sam to 'scale back the powers of the body that manages the Internet's global addressing system.'

    "Hello, pot? Yes, hi there, pot. This is your old friend, kettle."

    "You're black."

    "That is all. Goodbye."

  • I can't even keep track of all the complaints and gripes I've heard about ICANN over the years.

    A couple days ago a court ruling in California [com.com] looked like it might turn over one of the rocks where all the critters hide...

  • Lesser of two evils? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Sneftel ( 15416 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @04:41PM (#3994785)
    Oh, boy, VeriSign wants ICANN to give up some of its regulatory power. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.

    Maybe the Swiss could do it; they seem like nice folks. Very private. Kickass knives, too.
    • The Swiss also collaborated with the Nazis...

    • Who Shall Bell the Cat? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by llywrch ( 9023 )
      > Oh, boy, VeriSign wants ICANN to give up some of its regulatory power. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
      >
      > Maybe the Swiss could do it; they seem like nice folks.

      Heh. That's the rub.

      We're all agreed that ICANN is doing a bad job of things. But who shall we replace them with?

      Some department or body of the US government? I can't believe that the rest of the world would go for that very well. Same argument if we grant oversight powers to any national government -- be they the British, the Russians, Japanese or teh Swiss.

      Set up a part of the UN to oversee this? At best you would have a crippled organization because some major country (e.g. the US, China, Japan, one or more European nation) decided NOT to ratify the treaty that enables this organization to work. At worst, you'd end up with something worse than ICANN: not only corrupt & self-serving, but without a clue of how the Internet actually works.

      The best solution would be a group like ICANN only with more transparentness & accountability -- as well as a majority of outside directors elected in a representative fashion. The same fixes that Karl Auerbach has been fighting for. The same fixes I'd wager all of us would back. Once done, this body could eventually free itself from a close association with one nation, & become a truly global entity.

      This dispute doesn't address that. It's an attempt by various regional registries to sieze power from ICANN, to increase their own little empires. If this action is successful, instead of one crew of thieves, we're going to have several crews. Not an improvement.

      Geoff
  • Here is proof that raw, unrelenting, undiluted greed can cause people to do, not good exactly, but things with a net beneficial effect.
    • Here is proof that raw, unrelenting, undiluted greed can cause people to do, not good exactly, but things with a net beneficial effect.

      Help me out - I do not see anything beneficial here. I would agree that both ICANN and Verizon are poster children for greed, but I just don't see the positive or how the market has anything to do with this. IMHO, domain registry seems like a natural monopoly... How many roots can there be?

      (BTW I know about the OpenNIC - nice theory but it isn't working out that great in practice.
      • I was serious about the beneficial effect. If legislators see a consensus that ICANN is "bad" - from civil liberties groups, from the domain registrars who are ICANN's clients and provide ICANN with funding - then ICANN is unlikely to be given the total domination of the www that they desire.

  • Verisign? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 )
    "We want to to scale back their power, and give it all to US "!

  • Much as I hate to say it, if ICANN is pissing off Verisign then ICANN can't be all bad... Notwork Solutions/Verisign absofuckinglutely sucks , as anyone who's ever dealt with them will tell you in a heartbeat. Every network admin I've ever known will spew invective or expectorate (or both) at the mere mention of their name.
    Ole

  • Favorite Quote (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cdrudge ( 68377 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @04:49PM (#3994836) Homepage
    "A registry by definition has a monopoly, so they all have a common interest in preserving individual monopolistic practices, so they don't want to be accountable to anybody," Lynn said.
    Hmmm....replace registry with ICANN and it still hold true!

  • This is incredibly stupid... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Danse ( 1026 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @04:50PM (#3994838)

    So basically we have these different groups arguing over who gets to be the big cheese monopoly If our government had more than about 3 brain cells dedicated to this problem, we wouldn't even have a monopoly in the first place. Look where we are now. We have institutionalized cyber-squatting. We have artificial scarcity in domain names. We have a couple of unaccountable organizations resolving domain disputes. We have ICANN removing even the pretense of democratic control, while attempting to prevent the public (and one of its own directors) from ever finding out what exactly goes on behind the scenes or where the money goes. I think things are pretty well screwed up now. Do we really care which group has the monopoly? Unfortunately, nobody seems to have enough clout to stand up to ICANN and Verisign and get changes made. Most people just don't understand the issues. Those few that do don't seem to get any attention. It's a sad state of affairs when the world's leading democracy puts a non-democratic, unaccountable entity in charge of the Internet.

    • The worlds leading democracy?? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Which country would that be?

      It surely can't be the one whos DOJ effectively cancelled a trail against MS because of a change in government? Or the one which let the Media-indutry dictate laws like the DMCA?

      THe general impression in Europe about US politics is that money talks ... a lot.

      • THe general impression in Europe about US politics is that money talks ... a lot

        And it does. That doesn't really make Europe any better. They just suck less in some areas and more in others. The correctness of the phrase depends on what criteria you use to determine who is leading :)

    • If our government had more than about 3 brain cells dedicated to this problem, we wouldn't even have a monopoly in the first place.

      If there's one thing that's a "natural monopoly" it's insuring there are no collisions in a global name space. (It's probably more of one than being the court for people who can't agree on an arbitrator.)

      If we're going to continue with the current domains I think we'll have to bite the bullet on this one, let a monopoly have it, and ride herd on them to keep them from being oppressive.

      But IMHO "oppressive" includes charging an ongoing fee in the tens of US dollars annually for each name, rather than a (much smaller) one-time fee for assigning or transferring a unique name. (Imagine if you had to rent your personal name on the same basis.) It doesn't cost THAT much to maintain a database for assignments. The root servers can be maintained by ISPs as a (trivially-expensive) part of the service, if nobody (like MIL, universities, clubs, etc.) volunteer.

      Now an alternative for domain names would be to establish a bunch of new TLDs, one for each competing registry, and let them compete. Country domains could go wherever the country in question wants. IP numbers are another can of worms - but at least with IPV6 you have so many you could hand off BIG blocks and never feel a pinch.

      (By the way: I've NEVER understood why .us and/or the domain system in general was handed off to ICANN rather than the patent and trademark office, and protocol numbers to ANSI, NIST, ITU, etc. That's what they DO for a living, after all. A domain name, for instance, is one of the best examples of a service mark I've ever seen.)

      • If there's one thing that's a "natural monopoly" it's insuring there are no collisions in a global name space.

        True enough, but the monopoly would be miniscule and virtually powerless compared to what we have today if it was done right. There shouldn't be limit on the number of top level domains available to be registered. There's no technical reason for it. We should have thousands of TLDs and dozens, if not hundreds of registrars (I think this is pretty much what you're suggesting as well). Preventing collisions is not difficult, and should not be subject to monetary or political influence. First come first serve. If there's a dispute over trademark or copyright, take it to court or an independent arbitrator. Secretive, unaccountable, and special-interest controlled agencies should not be a part of the process.

      • Allowing this to be a monopoly is a mistake. Making it a monopoly is the easy choice, but it's the wrong one.

        A natural monopoly is something like building city streets. Not selecting a server. A natural monopoly has a small cost of providing the service, and a very large start-up cost, that keeps competitors out. If you need government regulations to keep out the competition, then you aren't a natural monopoly.

        Also, even natural monopolies need to be given a hard look. Frequently even something that would naturally tend toward becoming a monopoly can be channelled away from that with only a slight change in the operating requirements.

        But ICANN doesn't seem, to me, to come close to being a natural monopoly. They needed a special law from the government to keep out the competitors. That's pretty much proof in and of itself, without looking farther. And, natural or not, they've been an abusive monopoly.
        • Allowing this to be a monopoly is a mistake. Making it a monopoly is the easy choice, but it's the wrong one.

          A natural monopoly is something like building city streets. Not selecting a server. A natural monopoly has a small cost of providing the service, and a very large start-up cost, that keeps competitors out. If you need government regulations to keep out the competition, then you aren't a natural monopoly.

          You are confusing economics and politics vs mathematics.

          Domain name assignment is not a possible "natural monopoly" because of any economic or political issues.

          It is a possible "natural monopoly" becuase (in the absense of a new solution to the distributed update problem - a fundamental computer science conundrum) the process of:

          determining that a particular domain name is unassigned and

          assigning it to a SINGLE applicant
          is indivisible.

          This means:

          it must occur in a single database

          the operator of that database becomes an "authority" over whatever part of the namespace his database assigns and records.

          the only known multiple-authority solution that is "decicive" is to divide the namespace into regions and have a separate single authority for each region.

          This is the same issue as deciding who is the owner of a particular plot of land - precicely the issue that led to the creation of governments. And because domain names are a resource composed of unique items of considerable value you have the same potentials for conflict as with land.

          If you have (as a poster has suggested elsewhere):

          two (or more) authorities issuing two diverging interpretations of who owns which parts of a unique divisible resource

          the general population divided into factions, with only the opportunity to switch factions or start their own and recruit

          the leader of each faction (root server operator) chosing which authority to obey
          you have a political situation. If the faction leaders for most of the population stick with the old leader you have a king or "benevolent dictator". If they desert to a new one you have a peaceful transition to a new king. If they split you have a war.

          In this case it would be a "virtual world war", because the entire virtual world would, of necessity, be participating. And because it would be a fight over virtual things of real value, the potential for "collateral damage" is very real.

          A peaceful, decicive, solution will thus have single authorities over each chunk of domain name space. That's what I mean by "natural monopoly".

          Also, even natural monopolies need to be given a hard look. Frequently even something that would naturally tend toward becoming a monopoly can be channelled away from that with only a slight change in the operating requirements.

          By all means let's try to find a better solution. If we do, we can map it directly onto the allocation of other resources and settlement of disputes over them. And thus replace the current forms of government with something better.

          But I won't hold my breath - or hold up reforming the current monopoly decision-making system - waiting for it to be invented.

          But ICANN doesn't seem, to me, to come close to being a natural monopoly. They needed a special law from the government to keep out the competitors.

          That's just the current government (last-resort monopoly on dispute-resolution - natural or otherwise) exercising its prerogative of setting policy about something it thinks it created. With its usual efficiency. B-) The fact that ICANN's monopoly is currently propped up by the government doesn't say jack about whether it's "natural" and the government just picked the winner or whether it's imposed. It just says that it's currently imposed.

          The US government selected our current "assigned names and numbers czar" and imposed the monopoly situation. And right now it's about the only group of people in a position to change it.

          Now a grass-roots migration to an alternative registry might work for domain names - until a few companies whose names got "squatted" in the alternative registry file suit. But that won't work for IP number ranges. The whole backbone and all the ISPs have to agree on those because if any are in dispute their packets get lost. ... natural or not, they've been an abusive monopoly.

          Absolutely!

  • For some weird reason I have a visual image of 2 T Rex's fighting over prey.

    Neither are innocent and it's the victim that benefits from the fighting
    • Oh, I thought you meant they were fighting after the prey is already dead, and can't possibly escape. The two t rex's fighting wouldn't make a difference then.

  • Pot. Kettle. Black. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by davebooth ( 101350 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @04:54PM (#3994858)

    Does anyone but me find it ironic that the most influential gripe about ICANN is coming from the registries that gained most benefit from ICANNs excesses? Of course they only gripe about the price cap since this is one of the few ICANN policies that bites the registries harder than it does the domain owners.

    The registries are as evil as ICANN in their own way. The only spark of interest in this is that Nominet joined the party - Having dealt with administering domains in .com, .ac.uk and .co.uk I found that of the new crop of domain barons, Nominet were the most true to the way it used to be. (probably because when they took over .uk the fastest backbones in the UK were still in the hands of the academics, so they messed with .ac.uk at their peril)

  • Minor Gripe (Score:2, Informative)

    by Lozzer ( 141543 )

    England's dot-uk is the fourth largest Internet domain with more than 3.5 million registrations.

    I'm pretty sure they do for Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and some smaller Islands as well. In fact uk probably stands for United Kingdom, altough like most things United it isn't (I'm sure thats someone's Law)

    Grumble, grumble, whinge, whinte.

  • ICANN is bad. They do little about its problems. Let us take whatever we wan't for domains and run our services without interferance. Give us millions of customers on a market closed to anybody else.

    Great idea.

  • ICANN's roles should be strictly limited (Score:5, Insightful)

    by karl.auerbach ( 157250 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @04:56PM (#3994877) Homepage
    As a starting point, I assert that ICANN's role should consist of two jobs and two jobs only:

    - Making sure that IP addresses are assigned and allocated on a fair and equitable basis and in conformity with demands of the the packet routing systems of the Internet.

    - Making sure that the ICANN/NTIA root zone is expanded on a basis that is fair and equitable to everyone, that the root zone file is properly maintained and disseminated, and that its set of root servers are operated by persons and entities that have the proper skills, resources, and obligations.

    We have plenty of national legislatures and treaty organizations that can handle those who claim that their commercial rights trump other rights.

    It is an open question, and one that has never been debated, much less agreed upon by those affected, whether ICANN should have an additional role to act as a consumer protection body to protect those who due to historical circumstances are locked into .com/.net/.org.

  • In a Related Story... (Score:5, Funny)

    by nobodyman ( 90587 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @05:05PM (#3994923) Homepage
    Thousands of slashdot readers spontaneously combust, unable to pick a side involving an underhanded, unscrupulous entity and... an underhanded, unscrupulous entity.

    I'd just like to state that there were never such debates back when we were all using Gopher. ;-)
    • Yeah, if we could just get Microsoft and the RIAA involved.... :-)
      • Hmm... Microsoft's New Business Plan
        1. Buy VeriSign. If consumers protest, tell them we are doing it to incorporate encryption and security software into products.
        2. When domain renewal comes up, notify them that to incorporate new Security Features, they must switch to MS servers. If that doesn't work, offer them free domain registration if they switch to MS servers.
        3. Alter protocol to allow RIAA to broadcast network commands that peroform self-DoS attacks for music theft.
        4. ????
        5. MONEY!

        (Sorry about the last two, I could't resist.)

        frob.

    • I love multiple choice (Score:4, Funny)

      by number11 ( 129686 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @07:42PM (#3995692)
      Choose the one you prefer:
      1. a) Attila the Hun, b) Genghis Kahn
      2. a) Stalin, b) Hitler
      3. a) headcheese, b) haggis
      4. a) trial by ordeal, b) trial by secret tribunal
      5. a) death by hanging, b) death by firing squad
      6. a) ICANN, b) Verisign

  • Couldn't happen to nicer guys (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xmark ( 177899 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @05:08PM (#3994939)

    Heh heh, so ICANN and VeriSign are duking it out. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." The problem is, what if they're both your enemy? Then who's your friend?

    Which brings to mind another aphorism. "When elephants fight, it's the grass that gets trampled."

    Consider this quote from the article: VeriSign runs dot-com, dot-net and dot-org under agreements with ICANN that prevent VeriSign from raising the wholesale price of the addresses it sells ($6), or substantially changing the way it runs the domains.

    At VeriSign, domain names are six bucks wholesale; thirty-five bucks retail. This makes the bottled-water business look positively low-margin. The actual cost of service provided by VeriSign (less overhead for executive salaries, Aereon chairs, and Napoleonesque offices) is less than a dime. The markup on domain name registration is already expressed in scientific notation. But of course, even when you have a monopoly (as VeriSign has), everything is never quite enough.

    The history of VeriSign (and its predecessor, Network Solutions) and of ICANN is a textbook story of the effects of greed and commercial selfishness vs. political and parochial power-hunger upon the internet. Check it out yourself. [whmag.com] If you want to see the future of the net, you need only take a look at its past.

  • Authority? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What I don't understand is why ICCAN has authority over the whole international dns system. That made sense when the internet was all in the usa, but it is now international. It seems to me that the US congress lacks the legal jurisdiction to give ICCAN the authority it has.

    The only really legal way to set up such an organization would be by international treaty. You could make it part of the International Telecommunications Union or the United Nations, or set it up independently. Maybe someone should challange ICCAN in international court, or through the WTO, to get its international power stripped away.

    • Re:Authority? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by SirSlud ( 67381 )
      Considering that the WTO was formed in order to allow companies to seek damages from governments who 'mess' with the markets (like banning dangerous chemicals, natch, but thats a whole other ball of wax) .. I can't imagine the WTO taking power away from the private sector and placing it in any kind of public body. That's practically counter to the reason it was put together.

    • Re:Authority? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Sloppy ( 14984 )
      What I don't understand is why ICCAN has authority over the whole international dns system.
      Their authority has nothing to do with US Congress.

      They have authority over DNS because almost everyone is using their servers. Europeans, for example, give power to ICANN every time a European uses ICANN's root to look up an address. That's all there is to it.

  • And so it begins... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Another bombshell hit the beleagered ICANN community today. The latest studies are in, and it's official: ICANN is dying.

    Bugs and Daffy keep pulling off the "Duck Season" and "Rabbit Season" signs, one after the other, until finally a new one appears: "ICANN Season". ICANN is about to become everybody's bitch.

    Someone at Verisign sees two weeks into the future. And he doesn't like what he sees: Auerbach releasing document after document, proving their butt-buddy's corruption. What's the answer? Distance and misdirection! Either Verisign can wait until ICANN's shit hits the fan, and some of it gets on Verisign, or they can be first to stand up and point, "There's the bad guy! It was him!"

    Steal the Cave Bear's thunder, Verisign.

  • Such a joke. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Frobnicator ( 565869 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @05:39PM (#3995071) Journal
    This sounds like a corporate greed issue. It sounds like it needs some satire...

    ----

    Enter VeriSign, a corporate giant, and ICANN, a nonprofit service that thinks it is a private -- and profitable -- corporation.

    VeriSign (shouting offstage): Hey government, ICANN is taking our business!
    ICANN: But you are just trying to racketeer and price gouge.
    VeriSign: That's not the point. You are racketeering and we want more of the pie. Er, you are outside your jurisdiction on those matters, and are avoiding the issue.
    ICANN: But we filter our money through IANA and other profitable corporations, I mean, nonprofit public benefit groups.

    Two small groups, Nominet and DENIC, enter stage right.

    Nominet and DENIC: But what about us? We want to work closely with VeriSign because then we can get all the names that aren't taken with .com, .net, and .org. If VeriSign can price gouge, we should be able to also.
    VeriSign: You guys all wanna step into another room and we can discuss this rationally?

    all step into dimly-light back room, talking. Also in the room is a demonic figure in red, with horns, a tail, and a pitchfork. All of them laugh, join hands, and become a New Entity.

    New Entity: We have reached an agreement. We are now VeriSign-Nominet-ICANN-DENIC, or VeriSNIDE [dictionary.com] for short. Our new registration fee is $15000 per domain, or highest bid. Because we are Internet based, we will no longer report to any government or public entity. We will do all business from our fleet of personal yachts around the world. Please see our Lawyers and Accountants on the way out.

    exit stage left.

    ----

    Okay, so it won't be a blockbuster play, but it sure seems like the entire corporate world is following this model.

    frob.

  • Who watches the watchmen? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Stephen Samuel ( 106962 ) <samuel@bcgre e n . com> on Thursday August 01, 2002 @05:45PM (#3995097) Homepage Journal
    The letter seems to me like a Regulated Monopoly trying to get rid of the 'Regulated' and keep the 'Monopoly'.

    There are many things that I don't like about ICANN, but things like the limits they have on what the prime registrys can charge wholesale aren't one of them. I've had to deal with NSI->verisign refusing to allow me to transfer getyourassingear.com (which has now been taken by someone else). The last thing I'd want to do is make it even easier for them to stomp on their competition.

    That having been said, ICANN does need to have it's wrists slapped with a two-by-four (along with the back of their collective head). If they're not willing to go back to being the open, accountable, etc. group that they originally promised that they'd be, then perhaps they should be given a 1-year extension, and work done to design something that does work properly.

  • ICANN'T (Score:5, Interesting)

    by psicE ( 126646 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @05:45PM (#3995102) Homepage
    Why does the US feel that it should own the Internet?

    Countries have different laws. That's a fact, and a good thing; I don't think anybody wants that Hague treaty that lets people sue Swedish porn producers in Saudi Arabia, for example. So having global domains only invites problems.

    A French's company may have .com domains, but their corporate site will be at .fr. Similar for Japan, Germany, Britain, Canada, Australia, and pretty much every company in the world. Only the US, with a virtually nonexistent .us domain, has all its companies have .com domains.

    What we really need to do is eliminate the three-letter TLD, and have every single domain name end in a country code. Then. as part of getting a domain, the owner agrees to abide by the laws of the country controlling the domain, and no other laws.

    Whether ICANN exists or not, the US government tries to enforce its laws on the whole of the Internet. By more clearly enforcing existing political boundaries on the Web, all sorts of disputes can be resolved and avoided.

    • Re:ICANN'T (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Christianfreak ( 100697 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @06:30PM (#3995299) Homepage Journal
      Why do so many people insist on separating the Internet by geopolitical boundries? Your idea is just as bad as the Hague treaty. Just like the treaty it puts the burden of proof on content providers that their content is for a specific group of people.

      Your idea also does little to promote free use on the net. It would be much easier for governments like China to block out everything from the west. The way it is now someone in China at least has a chance of getting unbiased news.

      If I live under an oppresive government, I should be able to choose whether or not to break a law. I don't want DNS set up in such a way that the govt would make it nearly impossible to do that.
      • http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/wo_muller 071202.asp [technologyreview.com]

        Take a read. The government can do what it wants, but chances are, it won't work.

        What I'm mainly complaining about is that, right now, the .com domain is in a legal limbo state. What that should mean is that only the laws that apply everywhere are enforced; instead, that means that all laws are enforced.

        If there was a clearer geopolitical boundary on the Internet, that would mean sites would actually have to deal with less regulation; they would only have to obey the laws of the one country they register with, and not have to worry about foreign users accessing their site. France's Nazi-auction trial would have been moot, because yahoo.co.us would only have to follow American laws.
    • is no more meaningful than a 3-letter TLD. Both are meaningless in today's Internet. As are the www prefixes on so many of today's webpages. As are the '.' notation...

      Saying a 2-letter _ASCII_ (e.g. Latin characters) country code in any less US-specific than .com is a straw man. If other countries don't like the cruft which comes with a .com address, then they can freely not take a .com address...

      What we really need is a change to a global character set (a la Unicode) which will allow native characters in the URL... Have you looked at ASCII approximations of Korean Hangul or Japanese Kanji lately?

      At the same time, it would probably be wise to have an international group redesign the registration system entirely. (making it more automated, bypassing pointless "registrars", moving copyright battles into normal courts, dumping the TLD concept entirely, ...)
      • FWIW, many Japanese do not like UniCode. They have an alternate coding scheme, which is based around 32 bit characters. Sorry, I forget it's name. But the problem is that some Japanese Kanji are drawn from the equivalent, Chinese Kanji, I think depending on the position in the word, though I'm not sure.

        Anyway, UniCode won't work, though I understand the problem is being worked on.

  • Sore Losers (Score:3, Informative)

    by hether ( 101201 ) on Thursday August 01, 2002 @05:50PM (#3995123)
    Oh, VeriSign's just mad because ICANN rejected [dnso.org] their WLS proposal and

    "ICANN leaders have "very, very creatively interpreted their authority to get into areas they were never authorized to get into,"

    sounds suspciously like VeriSign's own business practices...

    Their both just giant evil entities anyway.
  • "We welcome this statement," said Clyde Ensslin, a spokesman for the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration. "The issues addressed in the letter are very significant,"

    So what are the issues? It's nice to see both sides being blasted here ;), but it's pretty difficult to judge who is screwing who. The only thing I got from that newspost was that ICANN instituted a price cap. Okaaayyy... so. What else, fellas?

  • openssh trojan'd, snooping networks with game consoles, someone close to dubya advocating hacking ... now verisign dissing icann i guess nasa was wrong about that asteroid missing us ... i bet that son of a bitch is gonna hit earth smack dab in the middle of the usa. something has to explain these symptoms/precursors of the world coming to an end.
  • Considering what it costs me to register a domain through verisign and the foul tricks verisign gets up to in order to get you to reregister the domain (spam mails warning about some theoretical domain loss) I can only laugh at this letter. Can you imagine what the prices would be if the 6$ wholesale cap were removed? $250 for personal use and $10000 if you're a business or some other Microsoft kind of price.

    Perhaps private citizens of the world should get together to form a monopoly on businesses. Then every time a large corporation wants to speak to me via mail or advertising they can pay for the privilige.

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