Take your blood pressure medicine before reading this one.
http://news.com.com/2010-1071-5086769.html
Apparently our objections stem from our lingering resentment over the commercial use of the internet.
In case you're wondering who the author is, since neither the bio on the page or Verisign's site is helpful. Mark McLaughlin is a former lawyer who moved into Marketing and Biz Development (Caere, Gemplus, Signio and then Verisign payments).
Wish someone who was good with the clue-axe would take a swing at these
dolts.
We all know they are crying babies because their new method of profit was
shut down.
Now, the interesting question will be, how can we prevent them from adding
sitefinder again?
The one that pisses me off more is
http://news.com.com/2100-1038_3-5087139.html?tag=nefd_top
The article makes me wonder if CNET is the press, or an outlet for press releases. The Internet community is almost uniform in expressing outrage for numerous REAL reasons, yet CNET says its from the Internet's technical "old guard".... Sorry, so where is the "new guard" calling for Verisign to come back with sitefinder ? Also CNET leaves un challenged the 'excuse of the day' that Verisign without site finder "will not be able to protect the Net's critical infrastructure"...
---Mike
The one that pisses me off more is
"Lewis said the company needs to make money from new services such as
SiteFinder, or it will not be able to protect the Net's critical
infrastructure. He cited a hacker's attack on the domain name system last
year, in which VeriSign servers remained relatively unscathed--largely
because of the 'substantial amount of capital we've had to invest,' he said."
I propose we make it easier for everyone and first of all Verisign and
relocate "Net's critical infrastrastructure" away from Verisign and let
others who have shown to be just as good at handling these complex issues
without compromising "Net's critical infrastructure" in order to promote
its own commercial goals.
P.S. Blood pressure medicine is not enough, after reading these two
articles from CNET, I'm now sick to my stomach... Are we really going
to let Verisign play this corporate interest misinformation compaign in
the media like that? I don't want the rest of the net ending up like
netscape (corporation, not the browser software), especially considering
such a clear parallels between Verisign and Microsoft.
:
:
: The one that pisses me off more is
:
: http://news.com.com/2100-1038_3-5087139.html?tag=nefd_top
:
Here's an interesting slip:
At the press conference Monday, VeriSign said it is convening
a panel of Internet experts to evaluate the technical fallout
from its change.
Are they saying that they had neglected to evaluate the impact before they
inserted the wildcard?
Mark
/* begin Karnak the Magnificent soothsaying
Next, they will put an "improvement" into reverse DNS. Whenever there's no corresponding domain, it will take you to rednifetis.com.
Baghdad Bob, fresh from "there is no tank behind me", will be the new spokesman.
/* end sooth
You know, I almost looked to see if rednifetis.com is assigned, and decided I don't want to know.
How much money from each .com/.net registration goes to Verisign for
gtld-servers? I thought it was a couple of dollars anyway. I find it hard
to believe that Verisign is not making a profit (not that that is a bad
thing since they are playing that angle) off of this. I'm sure there are
plenty of other entities that would be happy to do this service for the
money they get for it.
If the firestorm Verisign ignited burns down their own house I don't think
there will be many people crying. Note to Verisign - now is the time to
slink home with your tail between your legs. Keep fanning the flames any
you might find out that this 'vocal minority' is capable of creating
considerable blowback.
Mark Radabaugh
Amplex
(419) 720-3635
I wish it were lack of clue. This is something far more evil than lack
of clue, and, the bottom line is that these guys are much better at
PR than most of us. Since they can't win on engineering, because they
are wrong, they are trying to make it a PR battle instead. They are
having some success. We _MUST_ fight this as a PR battle. We _MUST_
write courteous, prompt, and, factual replies to these publications.
The more people who do that, the better our side will look. We must point
out where Verisign is lying, and, we must concede where they are not.
We must clarify where their technically accurate statements lead to
wildly inaccurate perceptions.
Owen
Well, I donno about anyone else, but I absolutely suck on the PR end of
things.
Now, I *am* good at writing documentation for end users (I used to work
helldesk).
So, my question is, is there any place on the web where we can go, see whats
been written up so far, find out what still needs to be written, and get
people to fill in the blanks?
I know personally I would love to put out a paper, but I have no idea where
to begin.
Contact us: http://news.com.com/2040-1096_3-0.html
Couldn't hurt to try...
Also, Declan's articles on Sept. 16 was most definitely not
a Verisign press release, see:
http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-5077530.html?tag=st_rn
Steve
Maybe he would be willing to help draft (or at least edit) a response
from the community at large. I do agree with other posters that a
response is in order, and I think it's important that it's concise,
reasonable, well written, and focuses on the main issues at hand. While
this list is not the place to create such a response, I imagine someone
could throw together an open list to create one.
It's true that the majority of the people on this list are not PR or
marketing people, and that's why it's important that we respond, and
respond in a way that's easy for the general public to understand.
It might also be a good idea to try to get some opinions from
non-technical people; most of the non-technical people I've spoken to
also find SiteFinder annoying and / or confusing.
I think this list may be a very good choice of where to construct
such a response. This is certainly an issue requiring coordination,
and, the results of this PR battle definitely have strong operational
ramifications. As such, I believe it EXACTLY fits the charter of this
list, while, being a bit outside it's traditional subject matter.
Owen
Innovation and the Internet
http://news.com.com/2010-1071-5086769.html
is about 12 hours old on google news
-Henry
"For this vocal minority, resentment lingers at the very fact that the Internet
is used for commercial purpose, which ignores the fact that it's a critical part
of our economy."
So verisign admit its about the $$$s then?
Sticking on the commercial argument claim which this argument is about, Verisign
also fails to mention that it is only the keeper of the registry and it is being
uncompetitive by allowing its registrar business to benefit at the exclusion of
the many other registrars.
Steve
http://news.com.com/2100-1038_3-5087139.html?tag=nefd_top
The article makes me wonder if CNET is the press, or an outlet for press
releases. The Internet community is almost uniform in expressing outrage
for numerous REAL reasons, yet CNET says its from the Internet's technical
"old guard".... Sorry, so where is the "new guard" calling for Verisign to
come back with sitefinder ? Also CNET leaves un challenged the 'excuse of
the day' that Verisign without site finder "will not be able to protect the
Net's critical infrastructure"...
We've been covering the impact of SiteFinder since September 16. I
didn't write that article (I was in transit from a conference in
Canada) but I've written about five articles on SiteFinder so far, and
I'll probably write another today based on the ICANN committee
meeting.
Taken as a whole, I hardly think our coverage of SiteFinder is an
"outlet for press releases" from VeriSign or anyone else. Take a look
at our first article from September 16:
http://news.com.com/2100-1032-5077530.html
Criticism is quickly growing over VeriSign's surprise decision to take
control of all unassigned .com and .net domain names, a move that has
wreaked havoc on many e-mail utilities and antispam filters.
On Monday, VeriSign began to redirect domain lookups for misspelled or
nonexistent names to its own site, a process that has confused
Internet e-mail utilities and drawn angry denunciations of the
company's business practices from frustrated network
administrators. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company enjoys a
government-granted monopoly as the master database administrator for
.com and .net.
That said, being a news organization (instead of an advocacy
organization) means that we're going to try to represent all sides of
the story. Just as we've given space to Jack Valenti, I suspect we'll
give it to VeriSign when they have something sufficiently newsworthy
to say. As always, feel free to email us at:
send-letters-to-news at cnet.com
I hope you continue to read News.com.
Best,
Declan
CNET News.com
Washington, DC
(but speaking only for myself)
> http://news.com.com/2100-1038_3-5087139.html?tag=nefd_top
> The article makes me wonder if CNET is the press, or an outlet for press
> releases. The Internet community is almost uniform in expressing outrage
> for numerous REAL reasons, yet CNET says its from the Internet's technical
> "old guard".... Sorry, so where is the "new guard" calling for Verisign to
> come back with sitefinder ? Also CNET leaves un challenged the 'excuse of
> the day' that Verisign without site finder "will not be able to protect the
> Net's critical infrastructure"...We've been covering the impact of SiteFinder since September 16. I
didn't write that article (I was in transit from a conference in
Canada) but I've written about five articles on SiteFinder so far, and
I'll probably write another today based on the ICANN committee
meeting.
Hi,
I think *your* articles are well done and are researched. However, I stand by my original criticism that this particular article was merely reporting one perspective on the issue in such as way as to make it appear as if it were a conduit for Verisign PR IMHO. The "old guard" label is a loaded term and smacks of judgement by your writer. Not quite calling it a "fringe group" or "special interest group" yet "old guard" vs "the network operators who run the Internet" certainly have different connotations.
Similarly, this repeating of Verisign claim as fact that its a minority of people who disagree with sitefinder and how it was launched is particularly maddening. Sorry, is there some alt NANOG group out there secretly saying that "gee, this site finder is great! Why didnt they do it before?" Or perhaps on a-slashdot, or a-IAB ?
I hope you continue to read News.com.
I will continue to read your articles but in general my estimate of news.com has dropped significantly.
---Mike