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[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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