“A search service for users who mistype web addresses,” is VeriSign’s description of SiteFinder. Here’s mine.

SiteFinder was, ostensibly, a search service for users who mistype web addresses. It was technically remarkable in that it relied on the addition of a “wildcard” address record to the “.com” DNS zone. Only VeriSign, as custodian of that zone, was in a position to effect such a change. The act thus constituted a use—arguably an abuse—of their privileged position. The change had widespread unintended consequences (e.g. in the area of spam filtering) because the changes were not—and technically could not be—web-specific. Many systems administrators were sufficiently inconvenienced by the “service” that they took preemptive action against such a change disrupting their operation in future. This motivated the addition of a feature in the “BIND” DNS server to selectively ignore wildcard records.

So was VeriSign legitimately “monetizing an asset” with SiteFinder, or abusing a public trust for private gain? In as many words as possible, today’s announcement completely fails to answer this question. Whatever agreement they have struck may well provide “business certainty for top-level domain name registry operators”, but as a top-level domain name registrant and general user of the DNS, I feel far from reassured.

My comments are at:

http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/ga/msg02847.html

If ICANN was negotiating for the USA during the Cuban Missile Crisis, we’d all be speaking Russian today.

It’s my hope that the GNSO will vocally oppose this proposed settlement which is not in the best interest of domain name registrants.

Sincerely,

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