[wildcard-comments] Comments

["Dan Mahoney, System Admin" <danm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm not sure if this will be read by a live person in the short time until
the meeting on the 7th, but a few things in my mind are very clear:

When the net was young, the "internic" was a trusted third party, that was
the only place you could go for registration, and a centralized authority
for disputes and appeals with regard to domain names.  We were able to
trust the internic because, simply put, we did not have another choice.
The fees they charged, we were to understand, were the only way they
maintained their operating costs (as well as grants).

The Internic was an "official", semi-neutral body, much like ICANN,
operating not-for-profit.

It is my opinion that that model should be restored.  The control of a
global registry has proven to be too dangerous in the hands of a
for-profit body, especially one that can be bought and sold by a larger
corporation, or one that has a completely unfair advantage over its
competitiors.

It's sad that Network Solutions was unable to uphold the trust that was
given to them by ICANN and the public at large in lieu of monetary gain,
but both their ability to register and/or regular domain name services, as
well as their authority to operate a root nameserver.  (More actually, to
operate *THE* root nameserver, no other root nameserver operator could
have done this), should both be revoked and handed off to an unrelated
party, or control designated to operators of one of the remaining root
servers.

Removing registration abilities from Verisign is harder, because of the
length of time involved, but I feel it would be only appropriate if
Verisign were mandated solely to maintain registration for
already-registered domains (remember, those have already been paid for for
whatever length, they are legally obligated to maintain them), but
prohibited from registering any new ones, or renewing any, or forced to
buy themselves out of the business by covering the cost of maintenance for
any domains still registered with Verisign.

--

"there is no loyalty in the business, so we stay away from things that piss 
people off"

-The Boss, November 12, 2002

--------Dan Mahoney--------
Techie,  Sysadmin,  WebGeek
Gushi on efnet/undernet IRC
ICQ: 13735144   AIM: LarpGM
Site:  http://www.gushi.org
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