[registrars] sitefinder nytimes.com article

[Larry Erlich <erlich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Verisign (and others) are not making comments
because they know that for each day that passes the chance
that anything will be done about sitefinder decreases. 

The longer they can hold out, the more this becomes OLD NEWS.

Getting someone to do anything about this will be 
become extremely difficult as time passes and the
public and registrars become complacent.

Larry Erlich

http://www.DomainRegistry.com


NYTIMES.COM

Disputes Erupt Over Service for Poor Internet Typists

September 18, 2003
 By ELIZABETH OLSON


WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 - Less than 48 hours after the company
that controls the most popular Internet names started a
site to make money from millions of misspelled or mistyped
Web addresses, it found itself under siege from critics who
said it was taking unfair advantage of its privileged
position.

On Monday, VeriSign, which serves as the central directory
for .com and .net addresses, introduced a service known as
Site Finder. The service is intended to send users of the
World Wide Web to a site supported by advertising when they
make errors querying the Internet addresses that it
administers.

By late Tuesday night, the Internet Software Consortium, a
nonprofit company responsible for the software that most
domain name servers use to direct network traffic, was
offering a software patch to counteract VeriSign's service.


The consortium was responding, it said, to a rash of
complaints that VeriSign was commandeering the Web's
"mistake" traffic, and routing it to its new site in the
hope that users would click on advertiser-paid sites
offered as alternatives.

"People started calling me at home and at work as soon as
VeriSign's service started," said Paul Vixie, president of
the consortium, which is based in Redwood City, Calif.
"They were demanding a way around it."

The software patch is being offered free to the
consortium's Internet service providers.

The business venture by VeriSign, which is based in
Mountain View, Calif., and has major operations here, has
raised hackles among longtime denizens of the Internet,
with some of them now demanding that VeriSign be stripped
of its franchise. Major Internet portals like Yahoo,
America Online and Microsoft's MSN, which offer similar
services with their search engines, are also unhappy over
having prospective pay-per-click customers taken away.

Brian O'Shaughnessy, a spokesman for VeriSign, who has
described Site Finder as a tool to help users surf the Net
more effectively, did not return a telephone call for
comment. The company's studies estimate that Web
misspellings occur about 20 million times each day, and
that users would like more than just an error message as
help in getting to their desired destination.

One of the biggest complaints about Site Finder is that it
cripples the ability of some Internet service providers to
filter out junk e-mail, also known as spam, that is sent
with false return addresses.

When some spam detectors try to determine a message's
validity, they no longer receive an error message; instead,
the message is returned to Site Finder. That makes it
appear that the message was sent from a valid domain name.

More broadly, Lauren Weinstein, co-founder of People for
Internet Responsibility, said that the diversion of queries
compromised Internet privacy. He criticized VeriSign on the
grounds that turning "unused names - many of which are
trademarks, of course - into a profit center shows a gross
abuse."

He is among those saying that VeriSign occupies a status
somewhat similar to that of a public utility because it has
ultimate control over .com and .net names. Critics say that
by starting a new business venture without consulting the
Internet community, VeriSign abused its role as the
quasi-official administrator of the registry of the most
commonly used roots for Internet addresses.

"You don't make changes that fundamental on the Internet
without consulting with those who are running it," said
David Farber, professor of computer science and public
policy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

"This is not any old company, but one that has been given a
privileged position, although they are not behaving that
way," he said. "I think what they've done is hijacking."

Professor Farber said VeriSign's service was akin to
running a dead- letter office for profit. "This can be
compared to giving the post office the right to readdress
the letter, and to sell all the information from handling
it," like names and addresses.

He called for VeriSign's franchise to be revoked because
"if you let them get away with this, there will be chaos on
the Net, with anyone getting away with anything."

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or
Icann, a private company that regulates the domain name
system through contracts with private registries, did not
return telephone calls for comment.

A spokesman for the Commerce Department, which regulates
the domain name system with Icann, said the agency was
studying the VeriSign service, and would not comment until
a later date.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/18/technology/18MISS.html?ex=1064904092&ei=1&en=25876cf5b2d13f36