VeriSign vows to fight on over SiteFinder redirects

By Steve Malone

Posted on 7 Oct 2003 at 10:16

US Domain name registrar VeriSign says it will continue to make its case for its controversial SiteFinder redirected service. Yesterday, Russell Lewis, VeriSign's Executive Vice President, General Manager said that the company plans to relaunch the service as quickly as possible.

VeriSign officials say that, as they see it, this is about having the freedom to innovate in the face of obstruction from a small number of Internet purists. The company claims to have spent several million dollars building the service and that the effect on the Internet in general has been minimal.

In a further development, a special meeting of the ICANN (Security and Stability Advisory Committee ) SECSAC is due to take place today (Tuesday 7th October). This meeting was hurriedly scheduled before VeriSign withdrew the service. However, now that there is less urgency, ICANN says that the meeting will be used to review the situation so far.

The SECSAC says that today's meeting will allow VeriSign an opportunity to ask questions, and to make a presentation.

ICANN is also proposing a second meeting where VeriSign will be allowed to set out its case and release any data it might have about the effect of the SiteFinder redirects on the Internet as a whole. The indications are that VeriSign is likely to come out fighting.