Re: [registrars] Verisign ownes every name that does not exist - millions for free!

[Paul Goldstone <paulg@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jim and all,

I don't believe that unresolved domain traffic belongs to Verisign, any more
than 404 file not found pages belong to them.  They own *.verisign.com, not
*.com

Besides, if they get this to pass, are they acting as Registry, Registrar,
both, or neither?  Only the Registry can capture unresolved traffic so it
must be the Registry.  If that's the case, they should only be permitted to
solicit the Registry and/or accredited Registrar services for com and net,
showing no favour to any one individual Registrar (such as Network
Solutions).  I'm not sure if that's their intention:

http://www.crmassist.com/news/dispnews.asp?i=100935&t=99
"VeriSign spokesman Brian O'Shaughnessy confirmed that the company was
testing a system to redirect bad Internet addresses to its own search page,
but he said no final decision has been made on whether to implement such a
program."

Never a dull day...

Paul Goldstone
Domain-it!, Inc.
www.domainit.com


At 08:10 PM 9/15/2003 -0400, Jim Archer wrote:
> Clever Verisign.  I suppose you could only do this if you are the monopoly 
> that controls the root zone, although I have not figured out exactly how 
> they do it yet.  I'm sure it will be clear as soon as we look into it.
> But really, Verisign is essentially using every name that does not exist, 
> thereby making it exist, kind of sort of.  Can they do this?  I would have 
> thought that even Verisign has to pay for their domain names.  With this 
> thing in place, they are essentially getting millions of domains for free.
> And, since many unsophisticated users often use a web browser to see if a 
> domain is available, NSI gets a huge advantage if Verisign decides to link 
> them to register the domain.
> I sure wish that my company could do this.  I'll bet everyone here does.
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A996-2003Sep12?language=printer
> http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Internet-Typos.html
>
> *************************
> James W. Archer
> CEO
> http://www.RegistrationTek.com