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OCTOBER 7, 2003
By Alex Salkever Verisign Didn't Deserve This Spanking The giant recorder of Web addresses sure sparked a fire when it redirected site-not-found messages to its own search engine. It's a bum rap When Web surfers type an Internet address that either doesn't exist or isn't spelled correctly, they get an error message telling them no such site exists. If the mistaken address falls into the .com or .net top-level domains, that error message comes from Verisign (VRSN ), the company that has an exclusive contract to maintain the records of who owns what in those two, most-popular, Web-address domains. So, if no one has purchased, say, the name www.bozoclowns.com and put up a site using it, then the task of telling the rest of the Net that nothing exists there falls to Verisign. That's something only Verisign could do for .net or .com mistakes because it's the one with the big database of registered names. According to Verisign, this type of miscue happens 20 million times per day. On Sept. 15, Verisign unveiled a way for it to make money from these mistakes. It started directing surfers to Site Finder, a Verisign-operated search engine. The page contained a search box and a "Did You Mean?" list containing similar domain names to the one typed in incorrectly. And Verisign started selling advertisements and paid search listings from Yahoo! (YHOO ) subsidiary Overture on Site Finder. Overnight, Verisign morphed from a nonplayer into a significant search-engine force with traffic in the tens of millions of users. LEGAL THREATS. Of course, not everyone thought this was a brilliant idea. Network administrators howled that Verisign's new policy would ruin spam detection and make it harder to use some network-management utilities. Some of these folks relied on error messages emanating from bogus domains to screen out spam that uses spoofed e-mail addresses from nonexistent domain names. A loud chorus of critics said Verisign was using its monopoly registrar power over .net and .com in a fashion not permitted by the contract it had received to maintain these databases. The International Corporation for Assigned Names & Numbers (ICANN), the world's top regulatory body governing Net affairs and the organ that awarded Verisign the contract, threatened fines and legal action if Verisign didn't cease and desist. The practice, ICANN claimed, had damaged the Net's overall stability and was in violation of neutrality clauses in Verisign's contract to operate the .net and .com master address lists. Verisign bitterly rejected ICANN's claims, saying Site Finder benefited customers. However, facing mounting pressure from the Internet community, on Oct. 2 Verisign backed down and agreed to stop redirecting errant address requests to Site Finder. "ICANN shouldn't be micromanaging these new services," said Verisign Executive Vice-President Russell Lewis at a press conference it held to address the issue on Oct. 6. BACKLASH. Over the years, Verisign has become something of a punching bag for critics and deservedly so. In 2000 and 2001, its reputation suffered after a spate of high-profile domain-name "hijackings," where impostors easily convinced personnel at Verisign subsidiary Network Solutions to transfer control of valuable domain names to them. Competing domain-name registrars sued Verisign in 2002 for allegedly attempting to dupe domain-name owners with a direct-mail campaign urging them to renew their domain-name registration. They claimed that Verisign used bogus expiration dates in the renewal notices and also didn't clearly inform customers they would be switching from other registrars, such as Register.com, to Verisign. In the current case of the redirected error messages, however, Verisign has gotten something of a bum rap. Part of the backlash undoubtedly comes as a reaction to Verisign's position as one of the Net's most powerful forces. Aside from controlling the database that records all domain names for .com and .net., it's also the largest domain-name registrar with over 27 million names under management. And Verisign operates 2 of the 13 domain-name system (DNS) root servers that are essential to the Internet's operation. These servers direct traffic on the Web by making sure that if a someone types in, say, www.gap.com, their browser will go to Gap's official Web site.
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