The Race Is On For .net

mikrorechner writes "As reported previously, ICANN is looking for a new registrar for the .net tld. The biddings are in now, and The Register has a lengthy article about the five contenders. Their guess is that only two really have a chance: VeriSign and DeNIC. We will know more in two months."

Anyone but Verisign

[H_Fisher]

P. J. O'Rourke wrote that giving money and power to government was like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. With VeriSign's track record being what it is, I'd say that giving them .net might end up being the same kind of bad decision.

I know there's no totally-impartial, non-profit-driven corporation or entity that can do this job well, but Verisign's past practices ("Site Finder" and its blind ignorance of how the Internet should work is a perfect example) have led me to see them as worse than the rest of the pack. I simply don't trust them to do the job right because they can't understand that the Internet != the WWW.

Re:Verisign stinks

[ThogScully]

Not that I disagree, but just sending people to a bunch of discussions about Verisign on Slashdot is not exactly incontrivertible evidence that they suck. There are lots of reasons, but the Slashdot crowd not liking them is not a reason that speaks to anyone but the Slashdot crowd.
-N

Re:Can't see how Verisign could win.. (article)

[acidblood]

So Denic isn't messing about and while ICANN would love nothing more than VeriSign to lose the .net registry, it would be equally delighted to see Denic win it. Why? Because Denic is the most powerful registry outside of ICANN control.

So it appears that The Registrar thinks that DENIC eG will win the bid. This is especially apparent when contrasted with their earlier snippet about Verisign's bid:

That was just an unfortunate choice of words by The Register. Reading further one sees that Denic is aggressively opposed to ICANN, so what the article author meant was that ICANN would hate to see either Verisign or Denic winning the bid.

Re:Can't see how Verisign could win.. (article)

[Zocalo]

so what the article author meant was that ICANN would hate to see either Verisign or Denic winning the bid.

In which case, I suspect that ICANN would probably have stuck with the Devil they already knew and hoped that the move would have smoothed the troubled waters between them and Verisign. That would however have led to all sorts of allegations about the selection process. Assuming that he's come to the same conclusions as the Register then the appointment of the independent body is quite a canny move by Dr. Twomey. Whatever happens, they should hopefully avoid any mudslinging after the announcement and can get on with what they should be doing.

Personally, I'd have to say that DeNIC is much better positioned than Verisign to be our .net gTLD overseer come July. DeNIC already runs a ccTLD with more domains that .net, so there should be no problems there. Moving the .net gTLD to DeNIC means that all the main gTLDs are managed by seperate entities; diversity is good here. Moving control of gTLDs about is certainly doable because .org has already been reassigned, and DeNIC has the additional advantage of knowing where PIR had problems. Finally, DeNIC is not a US company which addresses another issue for ICANN; they can use that as an argument against the UN/ITU's claims that control of the Internet is too US centric.

By contrast, all Verisign seems to be offering is a continuation of the status quo, for which they have managed to earn themselves a less than stellar reputation. Sure, they can do the job, but where's the vision? Big changes are afoot for the Internet over the next few years with VoIP, streaming media services and more all gaining momentum; I hardly think "status quo" is going to be a winning argument against that dynamic backdrop.

Re:Can't see how Verisign could win.. (article)

[morganew]

By contrast, all Verisign seems to be offering is a continuation of the status quo, for which they have managed to earn themselves a less than stellar reputation. Sure, they can do the job, but where's the vision?

Vision? I don't know if you have noticed, but ICANN has basically prevented anyone from doing anything visionary. ICANN has consistently delayed reconsideration rulings http://www.ombuds.org/reconsideration/ [ombuds.org].

Heck, VeriSign has been seeking approval for Wait Listing Service for years, and ICANN can't even seem to rule on that! http://free2innovate.net/archives/000430.html [free2innovate.net]

As Tucows put it "The principal problem for registrars has been that ICANN has proven incapable of making decisions or enforcing its contracts on matters of commercial practice. http://www.byte.org/heathrow/tucows-comments-icann -reform-third-v0r0d1-073002.htm [byte.org]

The reality is that ICANN is completely without vision themselves, and wouldn't know what vision looked like if it bit them on the ass.

"Internet Time" is now controlled by 19th Century bureaucrats.

Re:Anyone but Verisign

[norfolkboy]

"I know there's no totally-impartial, non-profit-driven corporation or entity that can do this job well"

I'd say that Nominet do an excellent job of managing .UK domains

www.nic.uk