No Such Weblog

Verisign's latest spin goes like this:

ICANN caved under the pressure from some in the Internet community for whom this is a technology-religion issue about whether the Internet should be used for these purposes.

For this vocal minority, resentment lingers at the very fact that the Internet is used for commercial purpose, which ignores the fact that it's a critical part of our economy.

That's, of course, outrageous nonsense. What Verisign attempts to do is to throw out services that are being provided at the network's edges by abusing its government-granted stewardship role for .com and .net.

The objection here is not about commercial use of the Internet: It's about keeping the net's architecture open for commerce. It's about keeping an architecture which enables different players to compete by providing innovative and better services to customers.

Verisign's sitefinder, however, is no such service: The only "innovation" here is to change the net's architecture in a way which makes it impossible for other players to compete with Verisign.

Time for a re-bid?