The New York Times says Disputes Erupt Over Service for Poor Internet Typists. That's such an understatment of the situation; it gives Verisign a benefit of doubt that they don't deserve. This isn't a "service", it's a dangerous power grab in an attempt to make a quick buck or two, it's a betrayal of trust from a company whose business is trust, and it's a reckless, unilateral, ad hoc alteration to core internet technology by stewards, not owners.
I sent the following to the Times, and I'm hoping that the reason it doesn't get printed is they have so much mail on the subject from such leading figures on the Internet that they can't even dip into mail penned by unknowns.
The headline of this article is misleading; the dispute is not over a service per se, but rather a unilateral corruption of the core structure of the Internet by a private corporation granted an important management role of a key technology. The resulting disruption extends far beyond hijacking the eyeballs of those who mistype addresses. For this reason, the furor among those professionals who create, deploy, and manage these technologies is near universal.
For a non-technical understanding of the scope of Verisign's move, start with the idea that without consulting anyone, your phone company decided to forward all calls to non-existent numbers to an anonymous telemarketer. Then imagine that the US Postal Service checks all addresses against valid phone numbers for accuracy; the phone company has suddenly rendered every address apparently valid, causing chaos to spread from the phone system to the mail system and on to the entire economy.
Verisign could be likened to a night watchman for a public commons who overnight de-sodded every patch of ungrazed land. They should be stripped of their responsibilities for the good of all.
