Rattle wrote:
] There will likely be more lawsuits very soon. Lots of people
] are still in shock I think. There are a number of entities
] which are likely to come out stomping on VeriSign.

Honestly I think this particular suit was essentially a publicity stunt... The worst thing that could happen to this guy is everybody knows him, but he looses. The best thing is Verisign funds his company and he gets rich.

Whatever. I think that the network is reacting slowly because no one expected this. It takes time to develop an intelligent response. The US took a month to really respond to 911... This is more care then shock at work.

Some thoughts:
1. The bind "fix" is actually a bad thing because it breaks .museum... (I think .museum is OK. Its the policy issue I have a problem with and not the technical issue.) I hope there is a movement to undo those config changes once this is over.

2. Verisign's authority comes from ICANN. ICANN'S authority comes from the Commerce Department. The Commerce Department's authority comes from us. If people were to start calling/faxing the commerce department like crazy, they would grill ICANN, who would grill Verisign.

3. Ultimately, if this gets worse, I'll set up my own name server. You can't make me obey your resolutions, and you can't hide your database from me either. I can use anything I want from your system and toss anything I want, and I can take the resulting name resolutions and sell them to anyone who is interested. Verisign's "power" is very much a consensual hallucination. We can all very easily decide to pretend someone else is in charge.

4. The Commerce Department wants a thumb on the Internet. They can't press it very hard, but they can do subtle things, and they would rather have that then not have it. ICANN is that thumb. If I decide to build my own "root" server because Verisign has pissed me off, ICANN looses power, and therefore the Commerce Department looses power. Its a hell of a lot easier for me to just not participate then it is for me to influence the system with my meager input as an American voter. The Commerce Department does not want a lot of people to figure this out. If that means slapping Verisign around, they'll do it. They have a vested interest in maintaining the hallucination.

5. Verisign doesn't understand that they don't run the network, the network engineers run the network. They are in the process of being taught a very serious lesson. (Again, I can't use sitefinder from my network connection. Its gone...)

"So, I guess it goes from God, to Jerry, to you, to the cleaners? Right Kent?"

RE: Forbes.com: VeriSign sued over controversial Web service