A possible showdown between ICANN and the US Government?
April 15, 2007For the longest time, many ICANN observers have felt that ICANN was not a truly independent organization, and that the ones really calling the shots was the US DoC. This became evident when the Bush administration successfully blocked the .XXX domain. Now comes an even more potent dilemma:
Who gets to sign the ROOT? That is, who keeps the DNSSEC private keys that authenticates the root (and thus, every gTLD and ccTLD, and by inference, every domain and subdomain thereof). He who holds the private key to root will be the only person able to successfully spoof a cached Nameserver entry. The person holding the root DNSSEC key could, theoretically, spoof the PH nameservers, and then spoof the Nameservers handling malcanang.gov. If that person were to spoof the MX as well, he could then intercept all incoming mail for gma@malacanang.gov. The only indication that there was an interception would be in the SMTP header (and even then, code can be easily written to alter that). Interesting, eh? (who knows, the CIA may be spoofing GMA's mail as we speak…)
If the US governent were to hold the keys to the root, then only the US Government would be able to intercept mail to a DNSSEC domain.
So it's really interesting. Some people are expecting ICANN to move its HQ out of the US (to prevent US meddling). My guess is, either (a) DNSSEC is delayed interminably while this is debated over and over (thus allowing ICANN to save face) or (b) the US will agree to let some neutral entity like the UN Security Council to hold the key (or even ICANN).
My preference is (b), of course. But my guess is that the Bush Govt will push for (a). Should be interesting.
Afilias to raise .INFO prices as well
In a letter to Paul Twomey, ICANN’s CEO, Afilias advised the fee charged to registrars for a .info domain will rise to $6.15 on 15 October 2007. This follows VeriSign’s announcement of a fee increase for .com and .net domains effective on the same date.
For the letter, see:
http://icann.org/correspondence/laplante-to-twomey-13apr07.pdf
Verisign recently raised prices for COM domains. What's next? A .EU price hike? A recent study (made available at Lisbon two weeks ago) by Verisign showed that a huge % of COM domains were actually in use (as opposed to being "just parked"). I believe the number was hovering around 85% (this includes domains owned by domainers, and being monetized through companies like SEDO, DomainSponsor, Parked.com, Skenzo, et al). I guess Verisign sees that if they raise COM prices to $10, probaby 95% of their clients would keep their COM domains. (What's the alternative? Get a cheaper domain and - Junk our calling cards? Redo our marketing brochures? Invalidate all the advertising money we've spent?)
It could just be that the only reason keeping Verisign from ratcheting up the price of COM is political. Verisign has to be "nice", or at least, perceived as being "nice", otherwise the DoC may get on their case.
