Louisiana Domain Registrar Affected By VeriSign Tactics: New 'SiteFinder Service Activates All Un-used Web Addresses

VeriSign's new 'SiteFinder service activates all un-used web addresses, potentially harming competing registrars and search engine marketing services, alleges New Orleans domain name registrar, Intercosmos Media Group, Inc.

NEW ORLEANS, LA (PRWEB) September 20, 2003 -- Like a bad horror movie to the tune of Night of the Living Dead, global domain name giant VeriSign recently decided to bring to life every single .COM and .NET web address combination possible.

Under the project name SiteFinder, all .COM and .NET domains that are not specifically registered to an end user will now resolve to an advertising page, sponsored by VeriSign.

We view this as an abuse of VeriSigns authority to oversee the domain name system," Sigmund Solares, an attorney and C.E.O. of Intercosmos Media Group, Inc. in New Orleans, said. Intercosmos operates one of the top 10 most popular domain name registration sites, directNIC.com.

VeriSign has been entrusted to look out for the common good of all domain registrars as the global registry for .COM and .NET domain names," Solares said. Instead, the company has simply turned nearly all potential Internet space into one massive advertising fishing net, all to increase VeriSigns own profits at the expense of other domain registrars and Internet advertising companies. This is not to mention the potential harm to the millions of Internet users," he said.

Many computer network troubleshooting, spam guards and other security testing techniques have depended on being able to determine if a domain name is active or not. That is no longer possible for the most common two domain names in existence, .COM and .NET.

The effect of these changes on Internet users and general Internet security is yet to be seen," Solares said.

VeriSign, which both oversees the global domain name database system for all domain name registrars and also acts as a domain name registrar directly to end users, could be in violation of various obligations to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), Solares said.

There also could be numerous anti-monopoly lawsuits following VeriSigns new tactics. Intercosmos, for example, operates an Internet advertising search engine that receives more than one million page views per day to its service at http://search.directnic.com.

By singularly using SiteFinder for its own benefit, VeriSign seems to have an unfair advantage in the paid Internet search market that was never intended or contemplated when the company was entrusted to manage the .COM and .NET domain name systems," Solares said.

Intercosmos, as well as other companies, are waiting to see the full ramifications of VeriSigns latest controversial actions.

A lawsuit may be in the forecast," Solares said.
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