Just out of curiousity, I wonder how many domain registrations those of
us
on nanog represent? Contract sanctions from ICANN are one thing, taking
all of our business elsewhere might also be effective at getting a point
across (though it might also backfire - pushing Verisign to be even more
agressive at taking advantage of their positioning).
There are alternative suppliers for registering domain names and
SSL certs. Look here http://referrals.tucows.com/
for registrars that are alternatives to Verisign for .com and .net.
Also, give your customers information about the .biz, .info and .us
domains and ask them if they would choose those rather than .com.
An awful lot of people want .com because they really don't know
anything about the alternatives. In this day and age, people don't
guess URLs anymore by sticking .com at the end of a word so there
is no longer any advantage to using a .com domain name over a .biz
or .info or .us. People learn about domain names from advertising
or by clicking a link on a web page. In both cases .biz, .info and
.us work just as well.
And don't forget to hire away all the best people from Verisign to
cripple their ability to execute effectively. If they are willing
to hurt your business for their own profit, then why shouldn't you
hurt their business for your profit?
Remember, there is nothing inherent in Verisign's products that
makes them better than the competing alternatives. Their only
advantage is that their products were there first so people have
formed the habit of buying from them without thinking.
--Michael Dillon
I don't know if this is a related move or not, but I just received an
email from Verisign that they are selling NetSol. A snippet:
Dear Valued Network Solutions(R) Customer,
Today VeriSign, Inc. announced that it has entered into a definitive
agreement to sell Network Solutions to a new entity formed by Pivotal
Private Equity.
Please be assured that Network Solutions continues to be committed to
providing superior products and customer service to our more than 4
million customers. You have seen evidence of this commitment in the
numerous enhancements we have introduced over the last 18 months. This
commitment remains strong today in our
600 employees, each focused on providing you with a superior customer
experience.
This point just became moot.
Versign is selling the registry business. Network Solutions is being spun off. They retain the back end DNS.
http://www.verisign.com/corporate/news/2003/pr_20031016.html?sl=070805
FWIW, I still do as it is faster than google. I bet that that there are
more people like me.
Also, some browsers add ".com" if your URL doesn't end in ".something".
Others cycle through a list of possibilities, but there ".com" is always
the first on the list.
Henk
I would certainly say there's an elitism, or perhaps a higher level of credibility given to a .com or .net site, due to the fact that they've probably existed for quite a bit longer than a .biz or .info. Although looking at that list I might note that I probably would include .us with .com and .net, despite it's very recent deregulation, or perhaps because of it.
Relating back to this thread, I have to conclude that because of this, and the fact that .net/.com makes up the majority of the registry this needs to be watched very carefully, and preemptive action taken should verisign make an anouncement, to suspend their registrar contract.
This point just became moot.
Versign is selling the registry business. Network Solutions is being
spun off. They retain the back end DNS.
They're selling the _registrar_ business off. They retain the _registry_
and the associated stuff to the back end DNS.
One might well suppose that VeriSign is somewhat keen to be permitted to
run Sitefinder as, when you come down to it, its a tidy little money
spinner for impressively little effort to point traffic to it.
Particularly if the money coming in from the registrar side is drying up.
Most of my spam points back to .com addresses. Not much credibility generated
there...
There's sufficient churn on the bottom-feeding .com's that it's not a reliable
indicator. Now you want *stability*, look for a site that's got a .arpa other than
in-addr.arpa 
The back end DNS is the registry service. What you are saying they are
doing is selling the REGISTRAR business and keeping the REGISTRY.
Or did I miss something?
Owen
No, that's correct. I just can't keep them straight in my fingers (and neither can Verisign, they are renaming the REGISTRY.
"This Registry business was recently renamed VeriSign Naming and Directory Services"
On the other hand, in our spam filters, we have a content filter block on the string ".biz" followed by a slash (I'm spelling it out because I don't think I've whitelisted this list). It works surprisingly well. Out of several tens of thousands of blocks per week on that rule, we get, perhaps, 3 FP reports. Which is an acceptable level of FPs given the overall effectiveness. Most of them are resolved by advising the sender to not end http://foo.bar.biz site-level URLs with a slash.