Re: [ga] More on Sitefinder suspension

[Karl Auerbach <karl@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 23 Sep 2003, John Berryhill Ph.D. J.D. wrote:

> > ummmmmmmmm. No.
> > that language permits the board to enact a policy. They can then turn
> > around and serve notice on Verisign to act. And Verisign can object and
> > force the matter to go to court whenre ICANN would have to go and
> > demonstrate that it is:
> >
> > "necessary to maintain the operational stability of Registry Services, the
> DNS or the Internet, and that the proposed specification or policy is as
> narrowly tailored
> > as feasible to achieve those objectives."
> 
> For preliminary injunction purposes, the IAB statement is sufficient basis
> for ICANN to prevail.  In the balance of harms test for the preliminary
> injunction, ICANN has a clear advantage.  The Security and Stability
> Committee said it disrupted stability.  There are two Verisign employees on
> that committee.

I don't think the situation is that clear cut.  My sense is that there
would be a rather intense fight over the credibility of the IAB.

For example, consider the IAB/ICANN statement about competing roots -
those reports claimed that the sky would fall, the seas would boil, and
hell would freeze if competing roots were allowed.  Yet competing roots
have been here and working for years and years - and the net still works.  
The suggested conclusion being that the IAB and ICANN have shown that they
are not necessarily immune from wrapping religion and dogma with a wrapper
that claims technical infallibility.

Also, the fact that Bind patches have been quickly written and deployed
could be used to argue that an injunction against Verisign would not be
necessary.

Neither of these are home run arguments, maybe not even first down
arguments, but they are enough to make an injunction less than a slam dunk
(ah, I love mixed metaphors.)

The idea that technical reports are deterministic died in 1956 with AT&T's
unsupportable "technical" claims about the doom that would befall the
voice phone network if the Hush-A-Phone product were not suppressed.  (See
http://www.cavebear.com/ialc/hush-a-phone.htm )

		--karl--