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Re: [ga] VeriSign May Ditch Domain Deal


 

"Gomes, Chuck" wrote:

 Bill,I don't have a clue what you are talking about.

Chuck:

And I, you. What "results quarterly?" I don't care about stockholders reports
(at least at the momen). We're talking about the NSI/Verisign monopoly (or
at least a temporary one) on information. How do all other registrars have the
same access as you do?
 

Bill Lovell
 
 
 
 
 

VeriSign reports it's results quarterly and those reports are on the VeriSign web site.Chuck

-----Original Message-----
From: William S. Lovell [mailto:wsl@cerebalaw.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2001 1:51 AM
To: Gomes, Chuck
Cc: ga@DNSO.org
Subject: Re: [ga] VeriSign May Ditch Domain Deal
 

"Gomes, Chuck" wrote:

What does so called SPAM have to do with separation of Registry and Registrar?

Chuck: There is nothing "so-called" about SPAM. I believe just about every ISP known
now has to spend mucho bucks setting up filters against it.  If there's anything more
annoying than that it would probably be yellow stickies and blue fonts.

What does marketing have to do with separation of Registry and Registrar?

Like I said.

No conclusive evidence has ever been produced to substantiate the rumor you mention, undoubtedly because it is just a rumor.  Again, this has nothing to do with Registry/Registrar separation because the NSI Registrar has the same exact access to the SRS as all other registrars.

Show us the document which says that - or at least that NSI doesn't have a head start in
which to add to its domain name horde. (How many domain names does NSI/Verisign
now have registered? Want to tell us? I think the portal to that information got closed.)
(So how come this isn't blue?)

I'm still waiting for facts instead of rumors and suspicions.  I am perfectly comfortable with you having a your own negative opinions about the current situation but I am not all comfortable with you making charges that are false.

Um, Verisign has the "facts" cuddled to its breast. When someone has the gumption to
sue and discovery starts, well, then, maybe we'll all know. The evidence by which NSI
(rightly) won the Lockheed - Martin "skunkworks" case in the 9th circuit never got into that.

And thank you for including my whole thing. I can't yet get my browser to show it!  :-)

Bill Lovell
 
 
 
 
 

Chuck

-----Original Message-----
From: William S. Lovell [mailto:wsl@cerebalaw.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2001 8:31 PM
To: Gomes, Chuck; ga@DNSO.org
Subject: Re: [ga] VeriSign May Ditch Domain Deal
The bloody SPAM is enough by itself. And as an attorney, I know
how "Chinese walls" work -- they don't.  How it was that "marketing"
ever got into the purely technical issue of running a root and recording
domain name registrations is beyond me, except for the fact that NSI
has NEVER done anything without first thought to its bottom line.
The "examples" pertinent to this issue itself  are of course within the walls
of Verisign, so I would invite you to provide any examples which show
that anything I have suggested is not true.  Hawking and registering domain
names is a marketing function, with a bit of techno-bit twiddling attached;
running a registry of who has registered what so that the DNS function
can be authoritatively carried out is pure techno-bookkeeping, and should
never be found in the same basket as marketing. They are philosophically
different functions that have an inherent conflict of interest, and any mix of
them is quite anti-competitive in that every registration then ultimately ends
up with the registry, thereby giving that registry an unfair advantage in its
own hawking efforts if it is permitted then to tout its own registration services
as to every conceivable variation of a "hot" name, which Verisign (and, e.g.,
register.com, but you see register.com does not have the whole pile as does
Verisign) does interminably.  I am not an antitrust lawyer, but I've studied
it, and I was not born yesterday.

Rumor has it that Verisign has also tracked WHOIS queries, and when one
looks like a "hot" one (read "marketable") it has immediately snatched it up
for itself, and although this also seems to be the practice in a lot of other places,
a look at the domain names that Verisign/NSI has registered to itself would
make it among the biggest, if not the biggest, cybersquatter on the net (were it
not for the loophole in the law that exempts registrars from that law -- a
loophole about which I would like to know -- and intend to find out -- just
how much Verisign/NSI had a hand in getting into that abominable law.

Chuck, no one out here with half a brain can fail to figure out what
Verisign/NSI -- of whom I am forced against my will to be a customer
if I'm to have a domain name -- does. Verisign/NSI past practices have,
I suspect, conditioned a good bit of the public to accept at once the idea
that Verisign/NSI would in fact be carrying out exactly what I've said.
And thank you for the email; it has moved me to respond, and suggested
that, since this issue is before the Congress right now, I should immediately
copy this whole thing off to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), so excuse me
while I take care of that chore. Maybe that will help put an end to this
farce.

Bill Lovell
 

"Gomes, Chuck" wrote:

Bill,Please give me an example that proves that the current separation between Registry and Registrar does not work.Chuck
-----Original Message-----
From: William S. Lovell [mailto:wsl@cerebalaw.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2001 12:43 PM
To: Bruce James
Cc: GA
Subject: Re: [ga] VeriSign May Ditch Domain Deal
Well, let's hope so.  To begin with, paper work "separation" between registry and registrar
functions has always been a gross fiction -- it never works and should never have been
contemplated. What do you think happens when the registry type says to the registrar type,
"Let's do lunch?" I never deal directly with NSI (Verisign) in registering a domain name,
but only when the necessary paper work trickles out of my registration application to some
other registrar.

Even so, I guess that makes me a "customer" of Verisign and gives them a crack in the law
that allows them to send me their SPAM. That's one reason why there's an incompatibility
between registry and registrar functions -- registries should twiddle bits, and that's all --
a registry should be hawking nothing. (For our nonUSA people to whom the slang term
"hawking" is not familiar, it just means aggressive marketing and that sort of thing.)

(Once our current more important issues get resolved, SPAM, privacy, security, etc., will
be my next projects.)

(The concession in par. 2 below solves nothing as to the problem in par. 1.)

Bill Lovell

Bruce James wrote:

""The major sticking point arose from a letter that the Justice Department sent to the Department of Commerce warning that the deal would harm competition in the nascent business of registering Internet names, people familiar with the negotiations said. The letter opposed the so-called vertical integration of VeriSign's managing of the ".com" database and registering new names in the database, sources said.""

""Commerce officials were said to be asking for more concessions from VeriSign, such as giving up control of the ".net" domain sooner than 2005.""
 
 

/Bruce

----- Original Message -----
To: GA
Sent: May 16, 2001 07:46
Subject: [ga] VeriSign May Ditch Domain Deal
VeriSign May Ditch Domain Deal

May 15 2001 04:57 PM PDT

The Commerce Department's review of the agreement that extends the computer security firm's control of the '.com' domain has the company thinking twice, sources say.

MORE at:

http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,24500,00.html
 
 

/Bruce
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



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