At Large Advisory Committee Statement on SiteFinder's Suspension

The ALAC welcomes ICANN's decision to remind Verisign of its obligations to run its registries for the public good, and VeriSign's compliance with ICANN's demand to shut down SiteFinder.

SiteFinder's suspension was necessary not only because it broke hundreds of specific applications, and because it was forced on Internet users around the globe without any advance consultation or notice: SiteFinder also needed to be stopped because it broke with the end-to-end architecture of the Internet to give one company monopolistic control of a resource in the center. It's not a contest between SiteFinder's search page and MSN's, but between giving VeriSign sole, centralized control of the error-handling for incorrect URLs and distributing that choice among users and applications at the edge of the network. The question is whether users can choose what services fit their needs best, or whether Verisign can take that choice away from users, forcing them to do what's best for Verisign's commercial benefit.

Sitefinder affects not only the web, but most other applications running on the net. The question here is whether the network is kept open for new protocols and applications, or whether it's left to Verisign to decide which applications the Internet supports well.

Keeping SiteFinder out of the center leaves the greatest flexibility in the network for those who want to innovate by adding new protocols, services, and features at the ends.

ICANN has called for "further evaluation and study" of the impact of SiteFinder. The proper question for VeriSign to consider is whether it will reimplement its advertiser-supported search as an option at the edge of the network -- where users can elect or decline to use it at their will -- or not at all.

Vittorio Bertola
ALAC Chair
committee@alac.icann.org

• Initial GNSO committee report on registry services, and request for comments
• SSAC Wildcard Report: A Report from the ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) on Redirection in the COM and NET Domains (9 July 2004)
• VeriSign Site Finder Request For Comments (17 September 2003)
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• Information Page: Verisign's Wildcard Service Deployment