[wildcard-comments] Verisign's conflict of interest

["J. Vogel" <jvogel@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Verisign should be required to remove their wildcard entries from the
.com and .net zones, and then removed from their role as operators of
those registries for many reasons, including the following.

Verisign now has two fundamental areas in which they stand to make
considerably more money for non-performance of their duties than they do
for performance of those duties under contract.

WLS is the first case. Verisign's revenue is limited to $6 per year per
domain registered, but selling WLS subscriptions nets them at least 4
times that amount. Since Verisign, according to the proposed
implementation of WLS may only sell one subscription at a time per name,
any event that causes that subscription to be "used" will free Verisign
up to sell another subscription on that name. Verisign can then increase
the revenue generated from a specific domain by at least 500 percent by
"inadvertantly" losing the registration, rather than keeping it in their
database as they are supposed to do. In fact, one of the proposed
"benefits" of the WLS that Verisign has used as arguments for the
creation of the service in the first place was exactly that... A domain
name registrant could view it as a type of insurance that they would
receive their name back in the event that it was inadvertantly dropped
from the registry. Verisign thus will profit just from promoting fear in
domain name registrants of non-performance on Verisign's part, by
inducing them to purchase WLS subscriptions on names already owned by
the registrant.

Sitefinder takes it a step further. Verisign now doesn't have to even
remove or drop a registration to increase profits, all they have to do
is remove glue records for that domain from the registry, and Verisign
will profit by receiving traffic intended for that domain at their own
"pay per click" site. The removal of the glue records can even be done
for auspiciously legitimate reasons, such as a registrar submitting a
Registrar-Hold on a name that is past expiration.

One case in point...

This week, I overlooked the renewal of one of my domains, and the
registrar rightfully put it in Registrar-Hold status. A few hours later,
even before Verisign had removed the glue records for that domain, I
realized that the name had expired and I then paid the renewal. The
registrar informed me that they had removed the name from Registrar-Hold
status. Approximately six hours later, Verisign removed the glue records
for that domain, causing all traffic intended for that domain to be
redirected to their own site. After about 12 hours of receiving the
benefit of "my" traffic on their pay-per-click site, Verisign reinstated
the glue records, and traffic started returning to my site. On a
high-traffic name,  the incentive is there for Verisign to delay
reinstating the glue records for as long as they can get away with it,
because they are deriving income from the name as long as it is driving
traffic toward their own site. In this way too then, Verisign profits
more from non-performance than they do from performance of their
contract.

The fact that Verisign's mail server was receiving all email intended
for me during that 12 hour period (remember that during that entire 12
hours, the name was legitimately registered to me) was also a major
irritant to me.

There are hundreds if not thousands of reasons for a registry operator
not to be allowed to do what Verisign has done and will do with
SiteFinder and WLS, and the only reason to allow these two programs is
to enhance the profit level of the registry operator with ill-gotten
gain. Verisign has shown where their interest lies. Where is ICANN's?
Remove Verisign now!

John Vogel