[wildcard-comments] VeriSign, keeping ball in the court of "ordinary user".

[Andrew Boling <davin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

VeriSign's primary strategy in keeping their SiteFinder service alive is 
to keep the controversy in the arena of effect it has on the average 
user who only uses the internet for WWW/HTTP browsing. The internet is 
an extremely diversified network of countless data-transfer protocals 
which are by no means similar to HTTP. This is the personal opinion of 
the writer, but VeriSign is endangering its position of having the right 
to run the TLD name servers which govern these additional protocals.

VeriSign insists that the technical difficulties SiteFinder introduces 
to the internet are "negligable", justifying this opinion by what the 
common user is capable of casually percieving. This demonstrates a 
desire of VeriSign's to willingly jeapordize the rest of the internet 
for the sake of their marketing strategies depending on a single 
protocal. VeriSign only further incriminates itself by offering its 
latest defense to complaining professionals, "you guys don't think 
consumers are relevant". This is a gross mis-statement, as VeriSign is 
only considering its own consumers while damaging the operations of 
other companies and *individuals* worldwide.

As an IT professional, who has no legal authority to inforce his 
opinions, I'm of the mind that VeriSign needs to have its rights to host 
the TLDs re-evaluated. The company has demonstrated its willingness to 
compromise the entire internet, by which I refer to all data transfer 
protocals and not simply HTTP, and attempt sway support of the general 
public to its cause by taking advantage of its ignorance. It is our duty 
as administrators to simplify the operation of the internet for ordinary 
users, so that they are not *required* to have an exhaustive knowledge 
of protocals and how they inter-operate. It is a testament to our 
resolve that users are able to utilize the internet effectively without 
knowledge of protocals other than HTTP. Taking advantage of this 
ignorance, especially to selfishly sway the opinion of the masses away 
from their own intersests for the sake of imagined democracy, is highly 
irresponsible.

I'm very sure the actual administrators working for VeriSign know *very 
well* the harm of what they're doing, but it isn't them who are making 
the decisions. We need only look as far as the commentary from 
VeriSign's ranking executives to see that it's all fluff, with a blind 
eye turned to anything remotely technical.