[alac] Losing SiteFinder
I just posted this to the alac.info, and suggest it might be a starting
point for an ALAC statement welcoming the suspension of SIteFinder:
ICANN demanded[1], at last, that the SiteFinder disservice be suspended,
and VeriSign grudgingly complied. As EFF's Seth Schoen notes[2], VeriSign
complains[3] of not getting a hearing when they gave none to the Internet
community before launching wildcards. Likewise, they fuss about notice to
the community[4] only after giving none to that same community impacted
when wildcard resolution was launched.
SiteFinder should not be suspended because breaks hundreds of specific
applications; it should be stopped because it breaks with the end-to-end
architecture[5] of the Internet to give one company monopolistic control of
a resource in the center. It's not a contest between SiteFinder's search
page and MSN's, but between giving VeriSign sole, centralized control of
the error-handling for incorrect URLs and distributing that choice among
users and applications at the edge of the network. The contest is rather
SiteFinder versus (MSN or simple language-appropriate error message or
WAP-provider's response or SiteFinder or ...), with that choice repeated
across the variety of services that use DNS. Keeping SiteFinder out of the
center leaves the greatest flexibility in the netowrk for those who want to
add new protocols, services, and features on the ends.
ICANN has called for "further evaluation and study" of the impact of
SiteFinder. The proper evaluation is for VeriSign to determine whether it
will reimplement its advertiser-supported search as an option at the edge
of the network or not at all.
[1] <a
href="http://www.icann.org/announcements/advisory-03oct03.htm";>demanded --
icann.org </a>
[2] <a
href="http://www.eff.org/news/breaking/archives/2003_10.php#000503";>EFF's
Seth Schoen notes -- eff.org </a>
[3] <a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42107-2003Oct3.html";>complains
-- washingtonpost.com </a>
[4] <a
href="http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/msg14917.html";>notice to the
community -- nanog mailing list archive</a>
[5] <a
href="http://web.mit.edu/Saltzer/www/publications/endtoend/endtoend.pdf";>end-to-end
architecture -- web.mit.edu </a>
--
Wendy Seltzer -- wendy@xxxxxxxxxxx
Staff Attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/seltzer.html
Chilling Effects: http://www.chillingeffects.org/