[IP] VeriSign, Internet Body Reach Truce on Site Finder Service Company Suspends Product On Demand From Icann After Outcry on Side Effects
VeriSign, Internet Body Reach Truce on Site Finder Service Company Suspends
Product On Demand From Icann After Outcry on Side Effects
By NICK WINGFIELD
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
VeriSign Inc. and an Internet-oversight body reached a temporary truce
Friday on a controversial new VeriSign service that exploits the errors
users make when typing Web addresses.
The agreement, however, may represent little more than a brief pause in an
increasingly contentious battle over aspects of the Internet that, until
recently, were largely free from commercial influence.
On Saturday evening, VeriSign of Mountain View, Calif., temporarily
suspended the service, dubbed Site Finder, which steered all Web users who
entered nonexistent online addresses ending in ".com" and ".net" to a
VeriSign search engine. The company halted the service, which was
introduced in September, after a formal demand from the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, a nonprofit group
that oversees the address system used on the Internet.
ICANN demanded VeriSign suspend the service pending further technical
review, though the group left open the possibility it might eventually
approve the service in some form.
ICANN regulates VeriSign and other Internet registries, and the group could
have fined VeriSign as much as $100,000 or revoked its contract to operate
the master list of ".com" and ".net" Internet addresses.
The showdown between VeriSign and ICANN followed an outcry from
technologists over the VeriSign service, which critics said disrupted the
proper functioning of some Internet applications. The service would send
users who flub an address -- say, by typing bestby.com instead of
bestbuy.com -- to another Web site, instead of simply giving the user an
error message.
Some network operators complained that the VeriSign service disrupted their
ability to block junk e-mail from bogus Internet addresses. AOL Time Warner
Inc.'s America Online, EarthLink Inc. and other Internet-service providers
modified the software on their networks to prevent the VeriSign service
from redirecting their users.
VeriSign executives, for their part, say claims of disruptions caused by
the service have been overblown. Site Finder, they insist, is a valuable
navigational aid for users who might otherwise hit an online dead-end when
they try to visit an erroneous Web address. VeriSign also stands to
generate significant revenue from the service by earning commissions
through relationships with other Web sites willing to pay to receive hoards
of misdirected users, analysts believe.
VeriSign says there is a larger disagreement at play in its conflict with
ICANN. "I think it really comes down to a philosophic difference" between
some engineers and businesses, said Russell Lewis, executive vice president
of VeriSign's naming and directory services group. "Clearly, there are
those who think the network is sacrosanct and you can't do anything with it."
VeriSign's critics, of course, see it differently, accusing VeriSign of
undermining the collectivist culture of the Internet, through which
engineers hash out key changes to the network through standards groups. "In
the past when you made a dramatic change to the network structure that was
the least bit potentially damaging, you went out through the community and
you exposed what you were going to do and got reaction," says David Farber,
a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University. VeriSign "just
broke that whole process."
It's also apparent, from the intensity of emotion surrounding the issue,
that VeriSign tampered with a portion of the Internet that many engineers
hold dear. Unlike the Web and e-mail, which have become thoroughly
commercialized through advertising, the low-level Internet routing software
that VeriSign altered with its new service has remained relatively
insulated from efforts to make a profit.
VeriSign executives say they notified ICANN of the service ahead of time
and that the company conducted thorough private tests to ensure that Site
Finder wouldn't disrupt the Internet. However, the company sidestepped the
lengthy approval process that has bogged down other new services VeriSign
has attempted to introduce in the past. Mark Lewyn, chairman of Paxfire
Inc., a company that helps Internet registries introduce services similar
to Site Finder, said the "molasses" approval process of ICANN and other
groups no longer worked given the financial pressures VeriSign and other
companies are facing.
Even ICANN, which didn't respond to requests for comment, said in a
statement on its Web site that the group is "sympathetic to concerns" about
its approval process. The group proposed new, more timely procedures for
introducing new services by Internet registries like VeriSign.
Write to Nick Wingfield at
<mailto:nick.wingfield@xxxxxxx>nick.wingfield@xxxxxxxx
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