So...correct me if I'm wrong here...does this mean that the
registry services operations and the GTLD maintenance
operations for .com/.net will be owned by different
companies?
I wonder just how different they are, and what deals are being
made under the table.
People don't normally draw a distinction between the registry
and the GTLD operations. Normally people just assume that GTLD
operations is part of the registry service. There are other
GTLD registries that have outsourced the operation of their
TLD DNS server operations but the key here is who controls the
contents of the TLD zone. In every case, that is the GTLD
registry so I don't think it would make any difference to the
situation if Verisign were to spin off the GTLD operations.
Remember, this whole thing was sparked by Verisign adding a
wildcard record to the .COM and .NET zones. They didn't change
their DNS servers; they just added bad data to them.
--Michael Dillon