[wildcard-comments] Stop Verisign DNS Abuse Petition submission -- http://www.whois.sc/verisign-dns/

["George Kirikos" <George@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

34 Burnfield Avenue
Toronto, Canada
M6G 1Y5

Tel: (416) 588-0269
email: George@xxxxxxxxxxx
web: http://www.Kirikos.com/

September 19, 2003

BY COURIER AND E-MAIL

Attention: Dr. Paul Twomey and Mr. Daniel E. Halloran
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330
Marina del Rey, CA 92092 USA
Tel: 310-823-9358

Dear Gentlemen,

On behalf of internet users affected by Verisign's sudden, unilateral
and non-consensus based introduction of its "Sitefinder" system, I
would like to formally submit the Stop Verisign DNS Abuse Petition
which has appeared at the 3rd-party and independently operated URL:

http://www.petitiononline.com/icanndns/

(now mirrored at: http://www.whois.sc/verisign-dns/ and
http://www.loffs.com/petition/)

since 4 pm Eastern time on September 16, 2003. It has already gathered
more than 10,000 signatures from a broad cross-section of internet
users world-wide, including large corporations, small business,
hospitals, individuals, registrars, and internet service providers.

It is well within ICANN's mandate to immediately stop this new
detrimental Sitefinder system, and ICANN should take all necessary
measures, including but not limited to using its emergency powers under
its contracts, to force Verisign to comply. The exact text of the
petition follows, as do the signatures of the first 10,500 individuals
and groups that support it (by the time you receive this, the number of
signatures should be even higher).

Please have your Webmaster add this document to the "Correspondences"
section of the ICANN.org website, for public review, along with your
timely response.

Sincerely,



George Kirikos

Enclosures: Petition + First 10,500 Signatures

Stop Verisign DNS Abuse

To:  ICANN 

We internet users, who either own domain names or have an interest in
the domain name system, wish to object to the Verisign Sitefinder
system. We believe that the system: 

1. breaks technical standards, by rewriting the expected error codes to
instead point to Verisign's pay-per-click web directory, and threatens
the security and stability of the Internet; 

2. breaks technical standards affecting email services, and other
internet systems; 

3. is anti-competitive, providing Verisign with 20 million eyeballs per
day for "free", while not paying for the domains they are resolving.
All other market participants pay at least $6 per domain per year
(wholesale); 

4. violates trademark rights of domain holders, by typosquatting on
their .com and .net domains; and 

5. violates the authoritative nature of DNS, turning it instead into a
"best guess" system filled with uncertainty, thereby destroying the
coherence of the DNS for Verisign's own short-term profit. 

We hereby demand that ICANN immediately: 

a) insist that Verisign cease giving incorrect answers to any query in
.com and .net, and should instead follow the IETF standards; 

b) if Verisign refuses, should redelegate the .com and .net zones to
registries that are more willing to follow the DNS standards; 

c) for greater certainty for all gTLD registries, pass a resolution
stating that "gTLD Registry operators WILL return NXDOMAIN for ALL DNS
queries for which there is not a REGISTERED domain name"; and 

d) that Verisign be reprimanded for their monopolistic abuse of the DNS
system, and return all audited gross revenues from their Sitefinder
system to stakeholders, via a payment to the Generic Names Supporting
Organization (GNSO) of ICANN in the name of the Non-Commercial
constituency 

[Supporting documentation can be found at the sites below] 

http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/ 
http://www.opensrs.org/archives/discuss-list/0309/date.html 
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/16/0034210 
http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/registrars/ 
http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/ga/ 
http://log.does-not-exist.org/ 
http://www.icann.org/correspondence/lynn-message-to-iab-06jan03.htm 
http://www.icann.org/correspondence/iab-message-to-lynn-25jan03.htm 
http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/ga/msg00336.html 

Sincerely, 

The Undersigned