[wildcard-comments] Wildcard DNS Compared to an Opportunistic Virus

["David Kaufman" <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This wildcard is like the phone company replacing the recording "the number
dialed is not in service" with a deceptive promotional commercial for their
own services.

It is a violation of DNS standards, a deceptive trade practice, and clearly
designed to give Verisign an unfair and short-term advantage over it's
competitors, at the expense of the long-term integrity and stability of the
domain name system itself.

I demand that Verisign be prevented from further misusing their monopoly
position in the future, by having their contract cancelled immediately, the
same as if any other company had caused this much disruption to the internet
community, solely for the purposes of fulfilling the corporate greed of it's
shareholders.

If a disruption to the internet of this scale were perpetrated by any other
company, it's owners would be criminally prosecuted.  Verisign's claims that
this was intended as a "service" are belied by the fact that they launched
the "service" just as one would launch a virus, with no warning, and with
the full knowledge that the wildcard DNS database corruption they caused
amounts to no more than the exploitation of a vulnerability they identified
in all properly functioning networking software currently in use, and they
are still exploiting it for the sole purpose of increasing traffic to their
sites, to increase the sales of their own services.  They did this
unscrupulously with no prior warning and continue to profit from those users
whose systems have not been corrected to repair this particular
vulnerability.

Had this indeed been a "service" which they wished to "offer" to the
internet community, as they claim, they would have announced it in
advance, and performed market research to determine it's value.  In fact,
they *did* do this research, but were convinced correctly that launching the
database corruption *unannounced* and unwanted upon an unsuspecting public
community would yield far greater short term profits, and further, they
determined that to stubbornly refuse afterward to *remove* the corrupted
data from their DNS database, and instead invite a potentially endless
worldwide debate (exactly such as this one that we're currently engaged in)
would extend the profitability period of this stunt for the maximum amount
of time possible (possibly forever).  We know this because this is exactly
what they've done, and as a publicly traded corporation, they *must* take
whatever steps that they believe that they legally can, to insure the
maximum profit to it's shareholders.

They should no longer be given opportunities to misuse their position of
competitive advantage again.  Their misdeeds of the past are legendary, and
since they have never been sufficiently reprimanded, they have come to
believe that they can launch a virus that generates the largest as possible
monetary gain in the shortest possible period of time, and in the process
victimize the least experienced internet users once again, for the sole
benefit of their shareholders.

Instead of allowing Verisign to continue to expend it's considerable
resources devising more and more deceptive ways to sheer the worldwide
internet community, I ask that ICANN send a message to the internet
community that those entrusted to operate it must act ethically: Revoke
Verisign's accreditation as a domain name Registrar immediately.

Respectfully,

David Kaufman
Power Data Development