In a move that has fooled no one, VeriSign refuses to budge on redirection bodge, but has committed to creating a technical review board that will consult with, not make recommendations to, Verisign regarding Sitefinder. Verisign, despite having some of the finest minds in the business on their payroll, seems intent on making a fool of the internet community and themselves before everything is said and done.

In a letter to ICANN, Rusty Lewis, the head honcho in Verisign's registry operations (and quite a nice guy actually), stated that "...all indications are that users, important members of the Internet community we all serve, are benefiting from the improved Web navigation offered by Site Finder...  As to your call for us to suspend the service, I would respectfully suggest that it would be premature to decide on any course of action until we first have had an opportunity to collect and review the available data. After completing an assessment of an it would be premature to decide on any course of action until we first have had an opportunity to collect and review the available data."

Rusty needs to hear two things. First, users being confused by the service - end users, developer users, operator users and registrar users. EVERY single internet user is somehow being negatively affected by the implementation of this "service". Putting a dress on it and calling it "an enhanced navigation service" doesn't means that its benefits outweigh its drawbacks. Rusty also needs to hear is that Verisign has absolutely no right to arbitrarily change the way that the internet's core infrastructure works before *we*, the community, "first have had an opportunity to collect and review the available data" prior to the introduction of any service that monkey's with the way that my internet works. None. This isn't about what the contracts or the RFCs say, rather, its about the moral obligation that Verisign has to the community to provide the service that we expect.

ICANN's solution can be very simple. Require that DNS resolution be run separately by a not-for profit entity that receives its policy directly from ICANN. In this environment, the registry protocol interface could be modified in such a way that the registry operator becomes an unnecessary artifact. I've discussed this option with other registrars - we believe that it could technically work. Will Verisign push the community far enough that consensus would view this as a viable alternative to the current regulated monopoly infrastructure?