Verisign has continued its fascinating twist of the knife in recent days, insisting it intends to keep beating this dead horse of a service.
The most fascinating comment for me, out of an article in, of all places, the Duluth News Tribune, of all places, is:
VeriSign earns money each time a computer user visits its new search site and clicks on some sponsored links. But it has declined to say how much it expects to earn, citing regulatory restrictions on such disclosures in the weeks before its next public financial filings.
Which strikes me as hilarious:
- Their contracts with ICANN require them to declare new services up front and get permission to run them;
- Their contracts with ICANN require full disclosure, including financials, and give ICANN power to discuss and negotiate such prices to ensure that we're not being ripped off;
- As such, care of duty would not only have required preannouncement of the service, at minimum, if not discussion with ICANN, but would have required full disclosure of their revenue stream.
I continue to find their post-apocolyptical scribblings fascinating; the retrospective justification for their actions leaks more water than a sieve, with the result being the impression that they were out to make a fast buck off of anyone who mistyped a URL. They could have come up with something really strong; they could have produced and provided enough evidence to cover their butt; but like a government off to war, they just didn't think of the aftermath.
