I care about the future of the Internet, which is precisely why it's in its best interest to have authority vested in an international body and not a national one.

What incidents are you referring to of ICANN broadening (improperly) its authority?

I hope you're not talking about the Verisign lawsuit.

No... in fact, I filed this post before news broke f the VeriSign lawsuit. But Free2Innovate.net has had some posts about ICANN's strong arm tactics, slow-as-Christmas processes and other problems. Read this one, this one and this one.

VeriSign is right to sue ICANN, by the way, and I predict they'll win. ICANN long ago stepped beyond its very narrow government-chartered mission and has increasingly sought to exert more and more authority over the Internet. No wonder so many countries want to strip it of its power and hand it to the UN, which would be a disaster for the tech industry, for the Net and for liberty.

ICANN's assumed power should be scaled waaaay back.

There is a simple solution. The Dpt. of Commerve just shitcans ICANN (pun inteneded) and creates a new oversight group. And you can forget about the UN grabing the internet. The Senate will not let that happen. The UN very well might create a UN Internet Committe, but it will have no authority and will make no decisions that anyone pays attention to. The UN is irrelevent. Thru it's own actions. It will not be many more years before it goes the way of the League of Nations, and for the same reason. There will be another crunch at the UN later this year when Iran gets put in the box about it's nuclear weapons program. If the farce over the Israeli wall doesn't do it, that will. I'm hoping Bush will start the groundwork for a UN replacement during his second term. That would be lovely.
Kerry akbar

VeriSign is right to sue ICANN, by the way, and I predict they'll win. ICANN long ago stepped beyond its very narrow government-chartered mission and has increasingly sought to exert more and more authority over the Internet. No wonder so many countries want to strip it of its power and hand it to the UN, which would be a disaster for the tech industry, for the Net and for liberty.

There's no denying that ICANN has its problems, but I find it very peculiar indeed that you would side with Verisign on this, if you claim to value liberty on the internet.

Why, exactly, do you think they're right to sue? (and why do you think they'll win?)

The internet community, no doubt, is the real loser here, as these two beasts battle it out, but Verisign is, by far, without question, the bigger evil of the two, here.

The biggest criticism of ICANN is that in too many situations it seems prone to secrecy and despotism, where their decisions do not reflect the consensus of the internet community that it was designed to represent (complications of this charter to begin with aside).

This, however, is not one of those situations. Not even close. The community has spoken:

Verisign is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

It isn't ICANN that will get shit-canned here. It will probably be Verisign. Verisign has completely overstepped the bounds of its vested public trust.

I find it odd that you chastise ICANN for overstepping its bounds, but then side with Verisign. The relationship between ICANN and Verisign has always been antagonistic, but they are two peas in a pod, battling it out, or playing good cop, bad cop. Pick a metaphor.

The point is: if ICANN had failed to intervene against Verisign when it initially rolled out its SiteFinder service in September, it would have served as yet more evidence that ICANN is no longer representing the best consensus interest of the internet community. This is why I find it odd that you take Verisign's side.

Care to elaborate?

I just don't think ICANN had, under its government charter and its contract with VeriSign, the right to prevent VeriSign from offering Site Finder. And it bugs me when government and quasi governmental regulators block innovation, especially in the tech field, which is all-important to the future of our economy.

If Site Finder caused technical problems, they were small and fixable. ICANN should have focused on that, and not tried to shut the service down entirely.

I just don't think ICANN had, under its government charter and its contract with VeriSign, the right to prevent VeriSign from offering Site Finder

It was consistent with its charter:

As a private-public partnership, ICANN is dedicated to preserving the operational stability of the Internet; to promoting competition; to achieving broad representation of global Internet communities; and to developing policy appropriate to its mission through bottom-up, consensus-based processes.

Like I said, ICANN has its problems, most often stemming from the vague wording of the aforementioned charter, particularly when it comes into conflict with the "consensus" of the community, which it's supposed to represent.

This isn't one of those times.

And it bugs me when government and quasi governmental regulators block innovation, especially in the tech field, which is all-important to the future of our economy.

There was no innovation here, other than an innovative way to abuse the authority vested in them, in order to exploit it to boost their own revenue stream. Period.

If Site Finder caused technical problems, they were small and fixable. ICANN should have focused on that, and not tried to shut the service down entirely.

There were not small and fixable.

Verisign undermined a fundamental agreement and expectation as to how the internet works that had been in place for decades.

Ramifications are detailed here, here, and here.

See also this post on NANOG that details the problems with Verisign's actions.

Michael Froomkin, a legal expert on ICANN, VeriSign, and prof. of law at Univ. of Miami, has said in various circles that he thinkgs VeriSign has "a winnable case" against ICANN re Site Finder.

Froomkin also commented here, about Site Finder, that...

Some people will say that ICANN’s impotence in the face of a serious technical hiccup is a problem. I think the signs are that the technical community is doing a fine job of working this one out in (excuse the ICANN-speak) a spontaneous, bottom-up, consensus-based manner that is technically sound and will contribute to the stability and security of the Internet.

Translation of the above:

1. ICANN has overstepped its legal authority, and

2. It's response to Site Finder - pressuring VeriSign to shut it down - was not necessary as the minor glitches caused by Site Finder were rapidly addressed by the Internet technical community.

VeriSign's innovation caused a few glitches, mainly by exposing weaknesses in such things as spam filters that relied on querying the domain name system to verify if the "from" email address was legit. That technology is obsolete because spammers now spoof the "from" address of real websites. Simple fix: ditch the old spam filters. Or update them to reject email as "spam" if it returns the Site Finder page instead of the "page not found" error.

Once the technical glitches are fixed, there's no good and valid reason VeriSign should not be allowed to offer the Site Finder service.

1. ICANN has overstepped its legal authority, and

Please explain how.

2. It's response to Site Finder - pressuring VeriSign to shut it down - was not necessary as the minor glitches caused by Site Finder were rapidly addressed by the Internet technical community.

The glitches were not minor, but I'll get to that in a second. You're right that the community did rapidly begin to work around sitefinder, but you're wrong to conclude that because of that, ICANN should not have intervened.

Indeed, it was ICANN's job to intervene, as it is supposed to represent community consensus.

Further, I think you need to understand how the community worked around the "glitches". The long-term solution would not have been a circumvention of the glitches -- it would have been a circumvention of Verisign (and ICANN) itself.

The authority that is vested in ICANN and, by extension, Verisign, is that of maintenance of the root nameservers (DNS is a hierarchy). The implicit assumption in vesting this trust in them is that they would continue "operational stability" of the internet -- that things would continue to work as designed.

So, while people, in the short-term, null-routed the Verisign IP and hacked BIND, this only addressed some of the specific problems. The long-term solution would have been similar to what would probably happen if ICANN ever went bankrupt (a goal of Verisign's for years): some intermittent chaos followed by the emergence of a new authority.(perhaps one of the alternative root networks, or a government-sponsored reform).

This is because a central authority is necessary by virtue of the way DNS works -- every hierarchy needs a root. So, despite your anti-regulation stance on this, I think you're missing the larger point that this is a job that someone has to do.

ICANN saved the internet community the trouble of having to circumvent the existing authority by simply forcing it to continue to do its job as expected: representing the consensus will of the internet community.

VeriSign's innovation caused a few glitches, mainly by exposing weaknesses in such things as spam filters that relied on querying the domain name system to verify if the "from" email address was legit. That technology is obsolete because spammers now spoof the "from" address of real websites. Simple fix: ditch the old spam filters. Or update them to reject email as "spam" if it returns the Site Finder page instead of the "page not found" error.

Look, I could rant for hours here: the spam-filtering is a drop in the bucket compared to the vast array of problems that wildcard records in zones create for DNS. But fortunately, I don't have to, since the IAB has graciously detailed them in a page that I have linked to three times now. I think you'd be well-served to read it.

The problems are not "glitches". They are fundamental changes in the way that the internet has worked for decades.

Once the technical glitches are fixed, there's no good and valid reason VeriSign should not be allowed to offer the Site Finder service.

I think this quote is a good example that you're not understanding the extent of the change that Verisign made.

Once the technical glitches are "fixed" in any reasonable way that would satisfy the internet community, the Site Finder service would no longer be viable for Verisign, because, well, it wouldn't work. As I've mentioned before, they would have been circumvented completely.

Note: in my previous comment the question "Please explain how." with regard to ICANN's legal authority is an extremely loaded question, because frankly, no one is quite sure what ICANN's legal authority is, including its own board.

Just thought I'd make that clear. So, uh, be careful how you answer that one.

All solvable problems, Chris. Reasons perhaps to take Site Finder down while they are fixed, but they can be fixed and VeriSign can and should be allowed to add Site Finder to the long list of similar services already operating on the Net. The real root of the problem isn't technical, it's business rivalry and a sense among some Net zealots that no one be permitted to make a profit running the infrastructure of the Net. But profit is what funds technological innovation and improvement.

The larger issue is ICANN, which seems to be aggrandizing itself with more and more power and perks and privilege that it doesn't have a right to under the governmental charter. It lacks sufficient governmental oversight, and because there is "higher authority," it can arbitrarily stop companies from offering useful services and necessary innovations. Case in point: domain names in other alphabets. It MUST happen for the Internet's potential to be fully realized globally, yet ICANN drags its feet - one reason why the global community is interested in taking ICANN's job and handing it to the UN.

I simply trust the market more than I do organizations like ICANN, that seem to be run by and for the people that run them. The fact is, when left to its own devices, the technology industry QUICKLY agrees to and adopts standards as technology evolves, because interoperability is a key to the increased business success of everyone in the tech business. Interoperability and coordinated technical standards are inevitable if you keep government and quasi-governmental but unnacountable regulators like ICANN out of things.

All solvable problems, Chris. Reasons perhaps to take Site Finder down while they are fixed, but they can be fixed and VeriSign can and should be allowed to add Site Finder to the long list of similar services already operating on the Net.

Wrong. There is no similar service already operating on the net. There never could be, because Verisign is the only company vested with this authority for .com, .net, and .org. Nor can the problems with sitefinder be "fixed". The functionality is either there or not.

The internet community either puts up with it or circumvents it. There's no inbetween "fix" here. Technically speaking the issue is clear-cut, and so was the community's reaction, and so was ICANN's response on their behalf.

The real root of the problem isn't technical, it's business rivalry and a sense among some Net zealots that no one be permitted to make a profit running the infrastructure of the Net.

Wrong again. This isn't about not permitting people to make a profit. It's about Verisign utilizing its authority in breech of the public trust for its profit motive.

I have to agree with Chris above.

Bill says --
"Translation of the above:

1. ICANN has overstepped its legal authority, and

2. It's response to Site Finder - pressuring VeriSign to shut it down - was not necessary as the minor glitches caused by Site Finder were rapidly addressed by the Internet technical community. "

I'm a little bit lost on how you got these two statements out of Froomkin's comment you posted but regardless I'm particularly suprised that you don't understand _how_ the technical communty addressed the issues. We simply ignored the responses given to us by Verisign that pointed to SiteFinder at the edge nameservers; those same nameservers that the end-users on the Internet use. At that point, Sitefinder simply became non-existent to any users of our nameservers. This was done the world over and I believe it to be a valid technical response to restore the proper and expected functionality of the domain name system. Besides all the technical reasons mentioned previously, why aren't you concerned that by implementing SiteFinder, Verisign is opening up a stream of revenue of millions of dollars or more a year by exploiting the millions of mis-typed domains a day. Think if you could sell advertising or preferencial search engine placement based on millions of impressions a day. Imagine that all that income to you and you alone was derived from a captive audience that had no choice in the matter whatsoever. It's not like Verisign gave people an option to opt-out or heaven forbid, opt-in. We as a WORLD Internet community had no choice and no say in the matter whatsoever. That's not what the Internet is about so we took the appropriate measures. I feel quietly confident that if SiteFinder is implemented again without the ability to opt-in or worst case opt-out then the Internet community as a whole will take the same measures to disable it once again.

What Internet are you surfing? I misspell a domain name and I get taken to ad-laden search pages all the time. MSN does it. AOL does it. And if they don't want Site Finder to interrupt them, they can work around Site Finder, even though queries go through VeriSign before reaching MSN or AOL.

Site Finder was a good addition to the Net because it helped people find what they were looking for more quickly - a search page is far more valuable than a "page not found" error page. If VeriSign made a few bucks doing so, well, heck, they've spent millions on securing the root servers and upgrading the DNS and they ought to make money doing it. And, as the WSJ pointed out when it wrote the first story about the impending launch of Site Finder, it noted that there were already such services on the Net.

This article by Sonia Arrison, director of Technology Studies at the San Francisco-based Pacific Research Institute, sums up the real debate rather well:

America Online offers a similar function. Google does it. So does Microsoft's MSN Internet access service. And NeuStar, which administers the registry of Web addresses ending in .biz and .us, has tested its own service to redirect all misspelled or nonexistent Web addresses ending in .biz and .us to a search engine page.

Consumers are far from complaining. VeriSign says that in its first week of operation, Site Finder's search tool was used more than 11 million times. And lost Web users used the "Did you mean?" function, which lists actual Web sites similar to the misspelled Web address, 1.6 million times to get to their intended online destination.

... Internet service providers can reconfigure their antispam filters to work with Site Finder. They can also readily block VeriSign from redirecting trash traffic to Site Finder and send it to their own search page. AOL has already done so, so what's the problem? This debate puts the spotlight on why ICANN--an organization without government accountability that operates largely outside of public view--gets to decide what services Internet consumers can use.

To be sure, ICANN has a board of distinguished experts, including Internet legend Vint Cerf. But while the organization is key in helping to establish complex technical standards, it often finds itself steeped in controversy over what many see as its overzealous urge for policymaking.

Part of ICANN's stated purpose is to develop policy through "private-sector, bottom-up, consensus-based means," but as most people know, consensus is often impossible and issues must be settled in other ways.

In Congress issues are settled by votes, and in the marketplace they are settled by the invisible hand. But the process at ICANN, as many have complained, often takes less palatable forms. This brings up the question of whether the organization is still the relevant vehicle for promoting competition and solving Internet policy problems.

Personally, I don't care whether Site Finder, specifically, exists or not. What bothers me is ICANN, an unaccountable quasi-governmental organization that is stepping way beyond its very limited scope of responsibility and authority and attempting to assert strong control over businesses that innovate new online services. The history of such intervention is one of slowing progress and economic growth.

Going back to the original post, it seems to me that while a controversial step, it would be worth amending the US Constitution to state categorically that 'control of the internet' (i.e. authority for the various arrangements between the DoC and ICANN) remain with the United States. That way there would be no risk of that control passing to the UN via bureaucratic mission-creep and back door agreements.