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The Internet Government The Courts News

VeriSign To Control .com Domain Until 2012 162

Posted by Zonk from the good-deal dept.
DIY News wrote to mention a Reuters article reporting that VeriSign will control the .com domain until 2012, according to an agreement with ICANN. From the article: "The agreement settles a long-running dispute between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, and the most powerful company under its jurisdiction. The settlement comes at a time when ICANN is under attack from China, Iran and other countries that want more direct control over the domain-name system that guides traffic around the Internet."
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VeriSign To Control .com Domain Until 2012 More

VeriSign To Control .com Domain Until 2012

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  • The Mayan calendar ends in 2012 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @03:02PM (#13874634)
    Coincidence? Yeah, probably, but you should call Art Bell just in case.

  • fair? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ajdlinux ( 913987 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @03:10PM (#13874743) Homepage Journal
    Verisign has been known to go around policy: who authorised .root? ICANN is known to be undemocratic and hold meetings in places where people can't access them. Could some non-profit organisation take over .com and make the internet fair again?

  • Iran? China? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Ritz_Just_Ritz ( 883997 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @03:11PM (#13874760)
    God forbid we should run the Internet in a way that displeases such an open and information-friendly group of countries.

    • Re:Iran? China? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Bah, you fell for it. There are lots of countries-- including democratic nations of Europe-- who would like to see the 'net under a more global control. It's not a US-only club anymore, after all, and hasn't been for a long time. The poster evidently wanted to stir up specific emotions by explicitly listing China and Iran.
    • well, the big us corps seems to bend over backwards to get access to the chinese markets. didnt yahoo help track down a journalist's id based on a email account on their systems?

      oh i forgot, thats about money, not "freedom"...
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Iran? China? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by slavemowgli ( 585321 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @03:47PM (#13875144) Homepage
      Well, that part of the article was FUD at its best, and you're the perfect example of a naive Slashdot reader who took the bait and fell for it, so to speak.

      For one, not all the world's Iran and China; admittedly those are dictatorships that you probably don't want having a say in how the Internet is governed, but the majority of the world's countries is not like that. Furthermore, the proposition wasn't that individual countries control the Internet; rather, it was suggested that an international body responsible for this be created. Kind of like the ITU, for example - which is not exactly a prime example of the devastating influence that countries like China and Iran would have, is it?

      And don't even think about playing the "free speech" card - that coming from a country where an accidentally-exposed nipple on TV causes a major outrage and where the FBI goes after and tries to shut down porn websites is just ironic. If you want the USA to keep control of the Internet, at least be honest enough to admit that you like to feel that you're in power, that you have control, and that you're better than the rest of the world.

      And now I'll most likely get modded down to oblivion for saying this, probably - again by people who otherwise constantly talk about free speech. Isn't it ironic...
      • Neither China nor Iran are dictatorships. Get your head out of your ass.

        • Say what? What do you think they are? Democracies? Iran has nominally democratic institutions, but it isn't a real democracy because a small group of clerics can veto anything that they regard as inconsistent with Islam and can, and have on numerous occasions, bar candidates that they don't like. Iran has a terrible human rights record, imposes a state religion, and censors the press.

          As for China, again there are certain semblences of democracy, but the real power is in the hands of the Communist Party

          • There have been many many types of government throughout history. Iran is a theocracy, China is pretty much the equivalent, but substitute Communism for Islam. Neither is a dictatorship. The fact that they are not dictatorships does not mean that they are democracies.

            I don't particularly like either of them, but that's cos they suck not cos they're not democracies. I also think that the Salem region of Massachusetts sucked in 1692 to a similar degree, regardless of its democratic status.

            • You're making some false distinctions. First, the term "dictatorship" is used in two ways. In its narrowest sense it refers to rule by a dictator, which is rule by a single person. Iran and China are not in this sense dictatorships but rather oligarchies. In its broader sense it refers to any system of government that is dictatorial. Although dictatorial is etymologically related to dictator, it is broader in meaning. In this broader sense, a dictatorship is a system in which power is restricted to a small

      • Re:Iran? China? (Score:2, Informative)

        by tommyServ0 ( 266153 )
        I don't think you understand what free speech is. It has nothing to do with nipples and getting modded down. My nipples, for example, do not speak, nor am I familiar with any medical literature that talks about nippular vocal abilities.

        In addition, being "modded down" does not infringe upon your free speech. If you were taken to jail for your post, then we would have a free speech issue on our hands.

        tS
    • Every week, maybe every day, we hear about another US-centric lawsuit based around "Intellectual Property" and licensing and a whole manner of stupid crap designed to limit access to our information-based purchases, such as DVDs or games or books.

      I didn't expect anything but hypocrisy from the country that brought us the DMCA.
    • I don't even believe that the control of .ir should be given to Iranian authorities, these fuckin bastards, all they know is how to limit people's access to any source of information which is not completely under their own control!
      Now that I'm writing this many bloggers are being prosecuted in courts, around 120 newspapers/magazines have been closed by the judiciary in the past couple of years and 99% of ISPs were enforced to block whatever relates to politics and p0rn, I don't care for the latter but I us

  • Verisign icky! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mister_llah ( 891540 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @03:12PM (#13874765) Homepage Journal
    They tried to start a 'service' to redirect mistyped domain names to a search engine (with ads)....

    These same people also make 6 dollars per year for the 35 million .com domain names in use, and then also the .net names.

    They are icky.

    ===

    Of course, one has to wonder... WWCD? What would China do? (if they had control) ... or any other nation/entity vying for control...?

    Mountain View, California-based VeriSign introduced a search engine in September 2003 that directed Internet users who mistype domain names like "www.example.com" to a search engine which contained advertisements

    IMHO, The internet should always be 'free' (except for the cost of connection) ... and I think right now its as free as it's going to be...
    • Uh, yeah, that Mountain View bit isn't supposed to be there, I guess it pays to edit, eh?

      I guess it goes well enough, WWCD, then I show what an American company would do.

      (Pause)

      No, it still looks like shite.

      Oh well.

    • No, you *don't* have to wonder WWCD (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      All you have to do is watch what they are doing with the Internet control they already exercise within their own borders. Imprisoning dissidents for speaking their minds, hunting down kooky but otherwise relatively-harmless religious cults with a vengeance, creating entire ministries of government for "reeducation" of Internet "addicts."

      US-based Internet corporations certainly have some things to be ashamed of... but they mostly involve complicity with the aforementioned Chinese governmental policies. The

  • A DNS scam? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jim Logajan ( 849124 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @03:21PM (#13874863)
    The ICANN and VeriSign dispute about the content of the root domain name servers makes about as much sense as a dispute between Fred and Joe over which of them can park their car in Bob's driveway.

    What contractual or legal obligations exist between ICANN, VeriSign, or any of the registrars and the owners of the traditionally accepted root domain name servers? Just how do ICANN or VeriSign intend to force the owners of the root DNS systems to sync their databases to the registrar's if they decide to cut out the middle man? What contractual or legal obligations requires ISPs to resolve DNS queries using the traditionally accepted root DNSs?

    I'd sure like to know what these missing links are. Seems to me they are fundamental....

  • Obligitory.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by fak3r ( 917687 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @03:28PM (#13874920) Homepage
    "All your .com domains are belong to US"
    • Heh, ever played Zero Wing? They didn't belong to them for long.
  • ...what does this solve?

  • Choose your evil (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fuzzy12345 ( 745891 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @03:32PM (#13874975)
    I thight this topic was pretty much mined out, so I don't expect the huge number of "USA, yeah! UN Sux!" posts that have characterized it in the past, but...

    What's everyone say now? ICANN President Paul Twomey said the settlement shows that issues involving the domain-name system are best resolved within ICANN, rather than through an international bureaucratic body. Am I missing something? Big US corporation uses threat of long, expensive US litigation to bend ICANN to its will? ICANN claims that this proves the system works, sure -- what else could they say and maintain a shred of self-respect?

    But now y'all have to chose your evil: VeriSign and litigation lawyers, or the UN? Bwahahahaha!

    • Well, litigation isn't designed to be useful, it's designed to make the litigants money. In theory, the UN is designed to get things done. Granted, it isn't efficient, but it gets stuff done.
    • VeriSign lost any shred of respect from me when they implemented SiteFinder [wikipedia.org]. I'm against them gaining any more power and I suspect if they're convinced of their control they will do this again.

      (By the by, I think this whole "who has control" thing is really over the top anyway; nobody's going to let the Internet "disintegrate", it's far too important no matter who's in control.)

  • Everyone wins...except the users (Score:4, Interesting)

    by A beautiful mind ( 821714 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @03:45PM (#13875116)
    So let me get this straight:

    1. Verisign introduces wildcard
    2. ICANN tells them to temporarily suspend that
    3. Verisign sues, but the case gets thrown out
    4. Verisign sues again and they settle that Verisign keeps its reign over .com until 2012, instead of 2007 BECAUSE they fucked up in the first place with that outrageous wildcard-advertising?
    5. No ??? here, just profit.


    Oh yea, and the people wonder why do I and apparently the rest of the world think that ICANN and the USA is not doing the task it had been given properly?
    • Oh, it is worse that you describe.

      ICANN didn't rule out the redeployment of sitefinder, Verisign has mearly agreed to inform ICANN first and ICANN has promised to give a quick technical review.

      Verisign will support ICANN as the controller of the DNS root against EU attempts to break the monopoly.

      Verisign has fought hard to protect domain owners by limiting ICANN domain fees to only grow by a factor of 3, while ICANN has fought hard to protect domain owners by limiting Verisign to increasing their fees

    • It's not quite that simple though. At the time NSI began wildcarding there were 13 other (cc)tlds that were wildcarding. Some (.ws I think) for about two years at that point.

      Now, there was a clause in the ICANN/NSI contract that NSI had put in (since neither ICANN nor NSI had even the faintest trust in each other; fair enough, each wanted the other dead and it showed; IBM forced them to get along; but I digress) that said ICANN can't treat NSI any different than any other TLD manager, so, when ICANN got fra

  • Why mention only China and Iran? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CharAznable ( 702598 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @04:00PM (#13875298)
    Why not the EU or any other number of countries that don't have despotic governments? Countries depend on the internet for a number of things, and it's only natural and sensible that they don't want to trust their vital infrastructures to Verisign or the US. Mentioning China and Iran seems like a lame attempt at scaremongering. "Imagine, the internet in the hands of China! Oh noes!"
    • Why not the EU or any other number of countries that don't have despotic governments?

      Because frankly the EU doesn't have any legitimate complaints. There's nothing the EU has tried to do that that ICANN has stopped them from doing. The same can't be said for Iran and China, who have tried extremely hard to eliminate the existence of subversive web sites. ICANN impedes their ability to do this.

      There are two big issues Europe is really worried about. Firstly, Europe wants to eliminate the IETF, because it emb
      • You say "who have tried extremely hard to eliminate the existence of subversive web sites. ICANN impedes their ability to do this."

        ICANN impedes them today exactly how?

        Any country that want to impede web sites buys cisco routers and proxy servers and firewalls their main access and redirects all web access through a farm of proxy servers.

        Why exactly do they need control of DNS to do this? In fact today they can redirect all port 53 requests away from OUR DNS servers to THEIR DNS servers.

        You say "Firstly, Eu

  • Higher prices too (Score:4, Interesting)

    by karl.auerbach ( 157250 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @04:06PM (#13875376) Homepage
    The prices for .com names may go up significantly - 7% per year.

    And ICANN's slice goes up to 50cents per name per year.

    All of this adds up to increased taxation on those who acquire domain name, i.e. you and me. Yet we are unrepresented in ICANN's decision-making processes. Can you say "taxation without representation"?

    And if you really think about it, what is the actual cost to provide a service in which the yearly cost is that of *not* removing an entry for a database and in which the resources consumed are a few hundred bytes of disk space?

    I've suggested a new domain name selling model - The .ewe Business Model - or - It's Just .Ewe and Me, .Kid(s) (http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000159.ht ml [cavebear.com])
    • And if you really think about it, what is the actual cost to provide a service in which the yearly cost is that of *not* removing an entry for a database and in which the resources consumed are a few hundred bytes of disk space?

      While completely agree with you [slashdot.org] about the price increases being out of line, I have to point out that what you said above isn't true. Verisign has to turn the dot-com name servers and have to provide an interface so that registrars (i.e. godaddy, netsol, joker, etc.).

      I don't bel

      • Presumably the price goes up because real costs (energy etc) go up while # of .com domains continues to go down. Therefore cost per domain goes up.

        Just a guess.

  • The arguments? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DynamicPhil ( 785187 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @05:33PM (#13876288)
    I have yet to hear *good* arguments for not transferring the power to the UN.
    Does ANYONE have those?

    Ive currently heard (and you will get my comments on the arguments in non-italic)
    The US doesn't mess with how its run
    false: we have the whole mess with the .xxx domain, and not to forget: what's going on with the iraqi domain?
    Well, since the current owners are in US custody (!??) its in limbo: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/30/iraq_inter net_domain/ [theregister.co.uk]?

    Transferring power will lead to greater Cencorship
    Oh, cencorship as in preventing media to display coffins of dead soldiers? Or showing a nipple on tv? Banning Al Jazeera from reporting from iraq? Or pictures from abu ghraib? (where the public - thats us, folks - have the right to know what is actually going on).
    No, my dear friends - it's time to 'fess up, and admit that there are plenty of countries - participating in the UN, as a matter of fact - that does the whole "Freedom of speech"-thing better than the US.

    The UN is corrupt
    Arguably the UN has had its share of scandals - it's no suprise since any political body draws the attention of people out for personal gain. This is solved by actively participating, and demanding increased opaquity of how the UN (or any political body - the US for example) is run. I won't even go into the whole Haliburton, Bush AWOL, Saudi connection, Campain Contributions and Florida vote scandals.

    Historically the internet came from the US - so it should remain in US control
    This one is plain dumb. Just because something is historical, doesn't mean that it neccessarily is good today.

    The US runs it better (technically)
    Not really. Ever heard of pharming? Im going to do a littel flag-waiving myself, and point out that right now Sweden is on the track to implement DNS-SEC, for examplehttp://www.nic.se/english/nyheter/pr/2005-0 9-14?lang=en [www.nic.se]

    To keep internet democratic, the US should be in control
    It IS a issue of democracy. The US has to hand over the power to a international democratic body, any other action is per definition UN-Democratic (no pun intended). I'm sorry, but arguing anything else is just moot.
    It's the US responsibility to participate and to try to affect the outcome of voting on these issues in the UN. That, my friends, is how democracy is supposed to work.(and I shouldn't have to point out what democracy actually is)
    I'm scared of that the rest of the world won't put the US intrests first.
    Well, should they? Honestly?
    The rest of the world is not, I repeat NOT, by definition Evil. Remember, North Korea, China (as is the US) are a part of the rest of the world. There are enough good countries to balance out the "bad" ones ("bad" as in the _US sense of the word).

    Ok, I'll probably be modded down for this post, but before bringing out the flamethrowers, I'm actually intrested in hearing good arguments for keeping it in US control.

    Regards ...

    • Re:The arguments? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by rs79 ( 71822 )
      "what's going on with the iraqi domain?
      Well, since the current owners are in US custody (!??) its in limbo: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/30/iraq_inte r [theregister.co.uk] net_domain/?"

      Around 1995 or so Bayan Elashi was given .iq by Jon Postel (apparanly on the basis of a phone call simply asking for it) I worked at a small company which Bayan was the president of in 1983/4. We talk every few years, or we used to.

      The company Bayan ran that I worked for built 100 CP/M S-100 Z-80 based Bilingual English/Arabic computers
      • Like what happened to the .ae Domain. It was run by a private citizen, and then the local MONOPOLY telephone company decided they wanted to be in the ISP business and emailed Postel who handed over the TLD to Etisalat with no process as defined at the time.

        IANA and now ICANN had and have too much power behind opaque rules and processes and it boils down to if the rules do not suit them they just act.

        No one asked the UAE internet community who should be redelegated the .ae domain. IANA just did it. The gover
  • Let each country control the root servers for it's country codes and the U.S. can start using .com.us like every other country does.
  • The FA does not say what happens after 2012.

    It is too easy but wrong to assume VeriSign to *relinquish* control after 2012.

    "Control until 2012" does not mean "Not control starting 2013".  I think the EU are fooled.

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