No Such Weblog

Seems like I missed most of the final showdown of Episode I of the wildcard wars today. Here’s the wrap-up.In a letter to Verisign (advisory here), ICANN has demanded that Verisign shut down sitefinder by 6 pm PDT tomorrow, until open technical issues are resolved. At the same time, the GNSO is requested to work out a procedure for the introduction of new registry-level services by 15 January 2004.See also: Commentary by Chris Ambler; discussion at ICANNwatch; discussion at Slashdot; reactions at CircleID. In response, Verisign has announced that it will temporarily shut down sitefinder (it seems like this step has not yet been implemented, though). It’s remarkable that Verisign spokesman Tom Galvin is now quoted characterizing Sitefinder as a non-registry service.See also: More ICANNwatch discussion; Chris Ambler; Verisign press release.

Andersenccenture puts Verisign in charge of electronic voting, and everyone around has the same association.Wendy Seltzer: What’s next, ballot-box wildcards?Ross Rader: The great thing is that if voters type in the wrong vote, Verisign has the technology to point them in the right direction.Martin Schwimmer: VeriSign announces VoteFinder Service.

Verisign has set up a Technical Review Panel that is chartered to look at implementation issues, to determine what enhancements could be made to improve the service, and to report the observed implementation issues to VeriSign along with any data supporting such issues. The committee is chaired by GNSO chair and SecSAC member Bruce Tonkin (Melbourne IT; conflict of interest statement; Melbourne IT letter to ICANN).This committee looks like another attempt by Verisign to distract people into discussions about implementation details of the Sitefinder service (there’s certainly room for improvement), in order to avoid the architectural concerns (which can only be addressed by dropping the service entirely).See also: Ross Rader’s take of the issue.

The registrars’ constituency has sent a resolution to Paul Twomey. Key points:

• ICANN should immediately require that VeriSign suspends [Sitefinder] and returns a “NXDOMAIN” response for zone file entries that do not exist;
• registry services should be compatible with the relevant agreements, and the security and stability of the DNS;
• gTLD registries should be required to follow a predetermined process when introducing new services in the future; that process should in particular investigate contractual questions, and security and stability implications.

An interesting comment concerning the Redemption Grace Period was sent to the ALAC’s forum list yesterday. The story: A registrant doesn’t get renewal notices from his registrar (Network Solutions) — but, after expiry, there is an offer to use the Redemption Grace Period to get the domain name back, for $ 150 instead of the usual $ 30. Apparently, an attempt to transfer the domain name away from NSI had failed earlier on.Update: A similar story is told in this message to Dave Farber’s IP list. This particular registrant seems to believe that the domain name in question was successfully transferred away from NSI prior to expiry, though.

ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee will hold a special meeting on 7 October 2003 at The Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC’s K Street. The agenda: Gathering input regarding Verisign’s introduction of Sitefinder. ICANN plans to webcast that meeting.Alexander Svensson finds the location remarkable, and notes that this meeting will quite literally make the wildcard issue more accessible to the USG.

There have been several recent comments that complain about the Terms of Service Verisign tries to impose with Sitefinder. James Grimmelmann has dissected their enforceability two weeks ago. Recommended reading for all those who wonder whether they may be bound by these terms.

Escapable Logic has a piece named “Publicize the Internet” that looks at the Internet as an important tool for democracy, and hopes that a president named Dean might help rescue it from losing its end-to-end character even further.Elliot Noss is more optimistic and suggests that it’s all, in fact, quite easy: Just make sure that you get most of your services from “competitive service providers,” i.e., from those who innovate and offer services at the net’s edges — and have a natural incentive to defend the net’s end-to-end character, as it enables their business models.

The GNSO secretariat points to some updated travel information for participants in ICANN’s Carthage meetings at http://www.icanncarthage.tn/.

Memo to anyone who ever sets up a mailing list: Never, ever let the envelope sender for list messages point back to the list.