Linux Online - Paul Vixie on VeriSign

Paul Vixie on VeriSign


Publication:	O'Reilly	Date:	Sep 24 2003

Paul Vixie has spent more than two decades contributing to the protocols and software that run the Internet. He founded the Internet Software Consortium and chairs its board of directors. Paul may be best known as the primary author of BIND v8, an older reference implementation of DNS.

Paul recently agreed to a brief phone interview with the O'Reilly Network to discuss VeriSign's recent redirection of nonexistent URLs to an advertising page.

O'Reilly Network: Can you give our readers a summary of the current controversy? What did VeriSign do that has people up in arms? How are you involved?

Paul Vixie: VeriSign put a wildcard name in the root of COM and NET top-level domains. This functions as a default; there's now no such thing as a nonexistent domain name. Your typographical error has just been monetized. Now VeriSign is making a lot of money by selling advertising, thereby bypassing the ordinary sharing with the other registrars.

I'm not a registrar, so the loss of income doesn't affect me. But I've been contacted by many BIND users. Soon after VeriSign's move, my phone started ringing at home with users demanding that we work around this in BIND.