August 07, 2002
Bulk Register Settles w Verisign
This just in - "BulkRegister officials announced Wednesday afternoon they had reached a settlement against one of its competitors over charges of domain slamming." No word on the details of the settlement, but it looks like a bunch of domain names are moving back to Bulk Register as a result of the agreement.
It will be very interesting to see if and how quickly the other suits reach this point.
The Sun revolves around the DNS now? Feh.
Martin Schwimmer points out in his Trademark Blog that the most recent SOTD stated that "an industry which sells 30-40,000 units a day worldwide at $2 to $3 per unit gross margin, cannot support 122 healthy companies."
Conclusion? "We are not going to see 122 registrars a year from now."
My conclusion? Both have it dead wrong. In this case, one has to follow the money back to its originating source and realize that those 30-40,000 units support far more than the 122 registrars that take credit for those sales. What about the tens of thousands of ISPs and Webhoster's that actually drive the demand for these services? 122 registrars is a drop in the bucket in comparison.
C'mon folks, its a big world out there - the sun doesn't revolve around the DNS.
People Drive Cars. Cars Don't Drive Bluetooth.
Infoworld is reporting that "Cars will drive consumer Bluetooth adoption".
I'm not so sure myself.
First, my practical view dictates that it has to be consumers that drive consumer demand. (It's okay for consumers to drive cars, but certainly not for cars to drive consumer demand. ; ) Second, there are any number of reasons that illustrate why Bluetooth is probably not going to get that far. I get it that this isn't Wi-Fi II (more like IrDA II), but it still irks me that even after everything that industry has supposedly learned about "hype" over the last three years that we still find industry press and gadflies talking in an airy-fairy manner like this.
Spam Spam
Is it just me, or has it become fashionable lately to write about Spam? Not in sense of how to get rid of it, who sends it or the like, but to write about specific pieces of individual Spam as if the author were the only one to ever receive it. I don't get this trend ladies and gents. Of course, that just means I'm getting old and crotchety.
What's the difference between IDNNow.com and New.Net? Tons...
"IDNs Now...for Windows. Verisign Global Registry Services announced the release of new software products this morning intended to act as "an accelerator for resolution of internationalized domain names." The software, available only for Windows Operating Systems, is available for download at idnnow.com. P.S. How, exactly, is this different from new.net?" [icann.Blog]
There is a big difference, in my mind at least. I picked this up in a separate conversation last month. The nut of the issue relates to the difference in implementation on the server side and the roadmap for the technology.
Now, with that being said, none of this absolves VGRS for the current state of the "pilot", nor does it mean that they are doing the "right" thing. Standards take time. Pre-spec beta initiatives attempted before the standard is ratified are always high-risk, especially when it means coordinating the behavior of millions of clients, millions of servers and an infrastructure as important as the DNS. One has to wonder whether or not the current state of real-world IDN initiatives have helped or hindered the development and deployment of a final spec. My inclination in this case would be to drive the implementation of a final spec from a political and engineering perspective given that the economic returns outweigh the value of "owning the standard".
Long term vs. short term horizons perhaps...
More on the FTC Investigation in VRSN's Marketing Practices...
Rona Abramson over at The Street has dug a little bit deeper into the FTC inquiry of Verisign's marketing practices. Most importantly, the investigation has been confirmed by the FTC. Other points of interest include some deeper thoughts on the root of the problem and where the industry needs to go. This piece features further comments by Mike Palage, chair of the DNSO Registrar Constituency and Tom D'alleva from Bulk Register.Clarification re Where did VRSN get their data from?
Re: Palage in the NYT - Now to be clear, the Registrar Accreditation Agreement does provide for rights in data after the fact (post-transfer to a new registrar), but Mike's question is still very valid - where did they get the data from? While I'm more interested in what they are doing with it, the fact remains that there are any number of parties that are harvesting the whois - those that engage in this behavior don't enjoy the same rights in the data that they collect as do those who collected the data during the normal course of business (ie - registering domain names) as provided for under the Registrar Accreditation Agreement.Where did Verisign get their data from?
The New York Times is running a piece on the investigation. Not much more information than what Reuters presents with the exception of some background information and a quote from Michael Palage in which he asks "[H]ow did they get the data [for their mass marketing campaigns]?"
My guess is that it has something to do with this clause in their accreditation agreement.
The Register is running a similarly thin story...