No Such Weblog

According to Kevin Murphy (pointer from Bret Fausett), Verisign is internally testing a mechanism that would return resource records in response to queries for non-existing domain names; if the query comes from a web browser, the effect would be that users are redirected to a web page that presents existing sites to them.Users and developers are deprived of the ability to choose themselves how to deal with such a situation — by choosing web browsers that do smart things about non-existing domain names, by configuring their web browser to feed the bad address into their favorite search engine, or by just fixing their typo.If the query does not come from a web browser, the behaviour described just means returning wrong error diagnostics, and creating another problem to route around.What Verisign is testing here (and Neustar has “tested” in May, in a live registry) is a fundamental breach of the Internet’s most fundamental design principle. And it certainly won’t improve users’ surfing experience.If Verisign was actually striving to improve user experience, then it would not overload existing query types with new and bad semantics, but would suggest a new “fuzzy” DNS query type to which a name server can respond with records that point to possibly corrected query strings — if the user’s browser chooses to ask for them.

Is it just me, or does the Copyright Office‘s favicon (the small version, in red) look amazingly like a “don’t write” sign?

From Congressman Lamar Smith‘s opening statement of last week’s WHOIS hearings: Mr. Berman and I wrote Secretary Evans on August 8 requesting that, among other things, any succeeding MOU: (1) be limited to one-year, (2) preserve public access to online systems, like “Whois,” and (3) take steps to improve the integrity of registrant contact information. … In response, we will hear testimony that Commerce: (1) intends to extend the MOU with ICANN for more than one year, (2) “recognize[s]” the value of public access to online systems, like “Whois,” and (3) intends to include no affirmative steps in the MOU in an effort to improve ICANN’s underwhelming enforcement record. While Commerce intends to add a laundry list of seven “milestones” to assess ICANN’s future performance, not one of these deals principally with Whois, contract enforcement, or intellectual property protections. This, too, is inexcusable.

Some reactions to the recent WHOIS hearings from the registrars list: Mike Palage and Rob Hall attended the hearing; Elana Broitman suggested to send a letter to the subcommittee in order to add the registrars’ perspective to the congressional record. That letter won’t be sent on behalf of the registrars’ constituency, though.

Bruce Tonkin on US Patent Application 2002/0145992 A1: In my view this is a straight forward application of database technology.

Writes Paul Twomey to Chuck Gomes: We understand that VeriSign has stated it intends to launch offering the WLS to the public in October 2003. We wish to reiterate, and reaffirm our mutual understanding, that the WLS may not be launched until 1) negotiations on conditions for offering the WLS are final and the contractual amendments to the .com and .net agreements effected and 2) in accordance with our Memorandum of Understanding with the United States Department of Commerce, the Department of Commerce has approved the contractual amendments as required by Section 1 of the MoU, as amended.On the substance of WLS implementation, ICANN accepts Verisign’s proposal for implementing registrant notification, and suggests an alternative to condition (c), the registrar “black-out” provision. The alternative proposal is to introduce penalties for registrar abuse of “insider knowledge” into the RRA, review enforcement of that provision in the VeriSign neutrality audit, and to introduce a general blackout period for WLS subscriptions which would start 10 days prior to the scheduled expiration date of a domain name, and would continue through the duration of the auto-renew grace period.Assuming that GNSO’s deletes policy becomes effective, this approach will adress the concern I had raised about this last year.

Here are the tools I used to de-spam mutt’s bug-tracking system over the week-end. The underlying software is debbugs, the Debian Bug Tracking System.

Heise online reports about a judgment from a Hamburg court that would limit the availability of .ag domain names in Germany to “Aktiengesellschaften” (abbreviated AG), the equivalent of a corporation.

From NANOG: During the root zone (.) update later today, specifically with root zone serial number 2003090501, the entries for .org will be modified. Effective with the 2003090501 load, the entry will reflect the removal of the Verisign NSTLD.COM nameservers. The .org zone file will continue to be pushed to the Verisign nameservers for a short period of time.

The written testimony for yesterday’s WHOIS hearing is now available from the web page of the subcommittee on courts, the Internet, and intellectual property: Metalitz; Edelman; Farnan (FBI); Kassinger (DoC).