Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you. Recently here in the United States, Senator
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Warren and Congressman Jerry Nadler have called for an
Speaker 1: investigation into a company called VeriSign. So why did they
Speaker 1: do that? Well, they say that VeriSign has engaged in
Speaker 1: predatory pricing their words. And what is VeriSign's business, Well,
Speaker 1: among other things, vera sign is the one and only
Speaker 1: entity acting as a registry for some top level domain names,
Speaker 1: and we're going to break all that down so that
Speaker 1: it's easier to parse. But let me preface this by
Speaker 1: saying this is complicated stuff, not just technically, but from
Speaker 1: like an organizational perspective. This is really complex and there's
Speaker 1: gonna be a lot of talk about the responsibilities of
Speaker 1: a registry in this episode and how things have kind
Speaker 1: of shifted around since the days of arpenet into the Internet.
Speaker 1: So what I'm saying is that there's a lot more
Speaker 1: to this than what I'm going to cover. In fact,
Speaker 1: I'm not even going to get into things like the
Speaker 1: DNS wars or the Root Registry wars, or any of
Speaker 1: that stuff, because it would require a full series of
Speaker 1: episodes all by themselves. So if what I'm talking about
Speaker 1: today is interesting to you and you want to learn more,
Speaker 1: let me tell you there is a wealth of information online.
Speaker 1: You can just do some searching around for things like
Speaker 1: DNS wars, for example, and learn all about how people
Speaker 1: were trying to establish standards in price. This is, you know,
Speaker 1: before you actually arrive at standards and practices, it can
Speaker 1: be a little bit like the wild West out there,
Speaker 1: and that was certainly the case with early organization of
Speaker 1: information on the Internet infrastructure. But let's talk about devices
Speaker 1: and names now. The naming of computers is a difficult matter.
Speaker 1: It isn't just one of your holiday games. You may
Speaker 1: think at first, I'm as mad as a hatter when
Speaker 1: I tell you a computer as a name that's really
Speaker 1: a bunch of numbers. You know. I was really going
Speaker 1: to try and channel ts Elliott through the whole episode,
Speaker 1: but it kind of fell off quickly there, So I
Speaker 1: guess there goes my chance of having this episode be
Speaker 1: turned into a musical by Androloid Weber. But yeah, in
Speaker 1: the early days of arpinnet, when a bunch of computer
Speaker 1: scientists were kind of sussing out how to create a
Speaker 1: system in which different computers would be able to communicate
Speaker 1: with one another and send and receive files and all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. One of the many challenges required
Speaker 1: that each computer have a unique name or address assigned
Speaker 1: to it. Otherwise you would have to rely on maybe
Speaker 1: a direct computer to computer connection to send information from
Speaker 1: computer A to computer B. And that works if you're
Speaker 1: just talking about two computers. Right, If you just need
Speaker 1: to directly connect two machines together, no big deal. I mean,
Speaker 1: it is a big deal. But you could do that.
Speaker 1: You could create a physical connection and create standards that
Speaker 1: would allow one computer to talk to another. Keep in mind,
Speaker 1: different computers communicate in very different ways, so you'd have
Speaker 1: to kind of build a translator in on either side
Speaker 1: so that the computers could understand the information being sent
Speaker 1: back and forth. But more than that, if you add
Speaker 1: more computers to this, so that you don't just have
Speaker 1: computer A and B, but you have C through Z
Speaker 1: and then all the numbers, well you get into a
Speaker 1: system that's far more complicated. Right. You can't just directly
Speaker 1: connect Computer A to all five thousand other machines that
Speaker 1: are on the network. That would be impossible. You would
Speaker 1: just have a massive cables that would be a real
Speaker 1: tripping hazard if nothing else, Plus where would you plug
Speaker 1: them all into. So sooner or later, you're going to
Speaker 1: have a huge mess on your hands that needs to
Speaker 1: be solved through some other means. And thus it makes
Speaker 1: more sense to create an infrastructure in which each computer
Speaker 1: has a unique name or address. So if Computer one
Speaker 1: wants to talk to Computer five hundred, will both computers
Speaker 1: have their own unique addresses, and that facilitates this connection
Speaker 1: between the two, so that Computer one is communicating only
Speaker 1: with Computer five hundred and not just blasting out information
Speaker 1: to four hundred ninety nine machines only one of which
Speaker 1: actually is relevant. You don't want it to be a
Speaker 1: party line. So those unique addresses would allow this to happen.
Speaker 1: And computers two through four hundred ninety nine plus anything
Speaker 1: above five hundred one or five oh one. And further,
Speaker 1: none of those are going to accidentally get the information
Speaker 1: meant to just go between these other two computers one
Speaker 1: in five hundred. So I'm not going to dwell too
Speaker 1: much on the old NCP days. NCP stands for Network
Speaker 1: Control Protocol. That is a topic that will require a
Speaker 1: deeper dive in itself in order to talk about network infrastructure.
Speaker 1: But it's a predecessor to what we have today. So instead,
Speaker 1: let's turn our attention to an approach that would succeed
Speaker 1: the old NCP rules, and that would be TCP IP.
Speaker 1: We usually write that as TCP slash IP. These are
Speaker 1: two sets of rules that are the Transmission Control Protocol
Speaker 1: and the Internet protocol. Remember, protocol is really just a
Speaker 1: fancy word to say rule set. This is the process,
Speaker 1: the rules that you follow in order to achieve whatever
Speaker 1: the thing is you're trying to achieve. Now, the transmission
Speaker 1: control protocol is incredibly important. This is where we get
Speaker 1: into stuff like packet switching with you know, headers and
Speaker 1: error checking and all that kind of stuff. The basic
Speaker 1: functionality that allows Internet traffic to work as it does.
Speaker 1: So instead of sending, say an enormous file all in
Speaker 1: one big chunk, you divide it up into packets, which
Speaker 1: makes it far easier to deliver to your destination even
Speaker 1: if a pathway shuts down. So, like let's say that
Speaker 1: you have a route planned where the information is going
Speaker 1: from computer one to computer five hundred, but then one
Speaker 1: of the computers along that route shuts off. Well, if
Speaker 1: you're sending one big file and it hasn't finished transferring yet,
Speaker 1: then you've got errors, you've got an incomplete file. You're
Speaker 1: gonna have to start all over again. If you divide
Speaker 1: that file into lots of teeny tiny little packets and
Speaker 1: you send all those packets across the network, and not
Speaker 1: all of them are taking the same path. They're all
Speaker 1: going to the same destination, but they're taking different ways
Speaker 1: to get there, then it's far more likely that all
Speaker 1: that information is going to arrive at its destination and
Speaker 1: get reassembled into whatever the original fileile was. That's the
Speaker 1: basics of how internet transfers work. But we're more interested
Speaker 1: in focusing on the other set of rules, the IP,
Speaker 1: the Internet protocol. These are the rules that involve attaching
Speaker 1: addresses to information so that the system can tell where
Speaker 1: the information is coming from and where it is going to.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like the physical postal address that you
Speaker 1: would put on a piece of mail so that the
Speaker 1: post service could accurately deliver your letter, or in the
Speaker 1: event that it's undeliverable could return the letter to you.
Speaker 1: You know, like, if it turns out the address your
Speaker 1: grandma gave you was fake and she's currently on the
Speaker 1: run from the authorities, I might be projecting a little here.
Speaker 1: Stay safe, Grandma. While the first part of tcp IP
Speaker 1: published way back in nineteen seventy four, the IP address
Speaker 1: stuff doesn't really come into play for another decade, mostly
Speaker 1: because it took years to establish a stable version of
Speaker 1: TCPIP that was reliable enough to reply the older NCP rules.
Speaker 1: These things aren't like an overnight switch. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: this included the creation of IP addresses, something that I'm
Speaker 1: sure you have heard about. The original set of rules
Speaker 1: for addresses came about with IPv four, and those involved
Speaker 1: a thirty two bit address. That means that the IPv
Speaker 1: four could represent nearly four point three billion different addresses,
Speaker 1: but I should add that lots of addresses were withheld
Speaker 1: for various reasons. Also, four point three billion wouldn't be
Speaker 1: enough addresses. It was clear that while it was more
Speaker 1: than sufficient for the arpinet days and the early Internet days,
Speaker 1: over time we would eventually run out of addresses to
Speaker 1: assign to devices, and we would need a different solution
Speaker 1: that ultimately would arrive with IPv six, but again, that's
Speaker 1: another topic for a different time. The IPv four address
Speaker 1: format consists of four numbers, and each number is separated
Speaker 1: from the others by a period. Each number could range
Speaker 1: between zero and two hundred and fifty five. Each set
Speaker 1: of numbers is an octet, which means it is made
Speaker 1: up of eight bits or a byte of information, so
Speaker 1: you get four bytes or thirty two bits total. Viola,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, voila. Gotta just refer to that in my
Speaker 1: notes here. The address can also be thought of as
Speaker 1: two parts. One part represents the network prefix and the
Speaker 1: other part is the host number. So the network prefix
Speaker 1: would be the same for all devices connected to the
Speaker 1: Internet through that same network. The host numbers would be
Speaker 1: unique to the individual devices connected to that network. Also,
Speaker 1: if the device is only visible to the local network,
Speaker 1: it could have a locally unique number that potentially isn't
Speaker 1: globally unique. That means some other device somewhere else on
Speaker 1: the Internet could have that same address. Now, if the
Speaker 1: device is visible to the world at large, then it
Speaker 1: needs its own unique number or else than there's confusion
Speaker 1: because you would have more than one device with the
Speaker 1: same address, which would be kind of like if someone
Speaker 1: in your town somehow has the same address as you,
Speaker 1: but lives in a different part of town entirely. Like
Speaker 1: let's say there's for some reason, two different Oak Streets
Speaker 1: and they have similar numbering conventions for the houses, and
Speaker 1: you live in one twenty three Oak Street on one
Speaker 1: side of town, and someone else lives in one twenty
Speaker 1: three Oak Street on the other side of town, and
Speaker 1: you both would end up getting mail for each other
Speaker 1: on a pretty frequent basis. That would be the same issue.
Speaker 1: So you have to have unique addresses otherwise the whole
Speaker 1: function of the Internet starts to break down. Now, the
Speaker 1: IPv four approach was great and that it made it
Speaker 1: possible for machines to connect to other specific machines across
Speaker 1: a network of networks, which is what the Internet is.
Speaker 1: But while machines could do this fairly simply, it was
Speaker 1: a real bear for human beings because you know, remembering
Speaker 1: a sequence of four numbers for everything that you want
Speaker 1: to send mail to or you want to go visit
Speaker 1: a website on the World Wide Web, that would be
Speaker 1: a huge headache, right, Like, what was this one, two, seven,
Speaker 1: dot like it would just be a nightmare. So what
Speaker 1: was needed was a means to translate those numbers into
Speaker 1: some other format, a format that would be much easier
Speaker 1: for human beings to work with. And thus we enter
Speaker 1: the concept of domain names, which were created as part
Speaker 1: of the Domain Name System, which came into being around
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three or so. The domain name system would
Speaker 1: allow users to rely on addresses made up of words
Speaker 1: and letters instead of seemingly random numbers. The machines are
Speaker 1: still communicating through numbers. The domain names and addresses are
Speaker 1: just a layer that's easier for humans to work with,
Speaker 1: kind of like programming languages, same sort of thing. It's
Speaker 1: a level of abstraction that's easier for us to handle
Speaker 1: than if we get down to the actual machine code.
Speaker 1: And so there was already precedents for this kind of
Speaker 1: approach using something that humans can work with. Machines can't
Speaker 1: natively work with that format, but you can have it
Speaker 1: interact or relate to machine code or in this case,
Speaker 1: IP addresses that would allow for machines to be able
Speaker 1: to actually make sense of the information. So those domain
Speaker 1: names and addresses, it's just a layer, and each of
Speaker 1: those corresponds to a numeric address. The domains themselves have
Speaker 1: multiple parts. Now, one of those parts is what we
Speaker 1: call the top level domain or TLD. This is what
Speaker 1: we're concerned with when it comes to VeriSign. The TLD
Speaker 1: is the extension that follows the dot at the end
Speaker 1: of a basic URL. So, for example, years ago, I
Speaker 1: wrote for the website HowStuffWorks dot Com. Well, that dot
Speaker 1: com part is the top level domain. The comm stands
Speaker 1: for commercial, and the dot com domain was meant for
Speaker 1: commercial organization. It's also far and away the most popular
Speaker 1: of the top level domains. The house stuff Works bit
Speaker 1: of the address would be what we would call a
Speaker 1: second level domain. The www bit at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the web URL would be a subdomain. But it's the
Speaker 1: top level domains we're really concerned about when we're talking
Speaker 1: about vera sign. So we'll talk more about what that
Speaker 1: means in just a moment, But first let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break to thank our sponsors. All right, So, in
Speaker 1: order to get a domain for a website, you have
Speaker 1: to purchase your domain from a registrar. Registrars are the
Speaker 1: companies responsible for selling and assigning a domain to a customer.
Speaker 1: So if you want a top level domain where your
Speaker 1: top level domain is, well, ultimately your registrar has to
Speaker 1: get that from a registry. These are two different services,
Speaker 1: they're similar, and in fact VeriSign itself historically has operated
Speaker 1: as both, though that changed many years ago. At this point,
Speaker 1: we'll get to that. So if you wanta dot com domain, ultimately,
Speaker 1: once you go up the chain, the supply chain for
Speaker 1: domain names, VeriSign is the stopping point for that. VeriSign
Speaker 1: is the only company that ultimately oversees the registration of
Speaker 1: dot com domains. So how did that happen? How is
Speaker 1: it that a single company became the gatekeeper for the
Speaker 1: dot com TLD. Well, we've got a lot more history
Speaker 1: to get through before we can actually answer that, because
Speaker 1: this is complicated stuff, and this history also gets a
Speaker 1: bit fuzzy because in real life it could be hard
Speaker 1: to point out a firm date and say definitively this
Speaker 1: is when it began. But let's try and muddle our
Speaker 1: way through this. So the DNS, the domain name system,
Speaker 1: becomes a thing around nineteen eighty three, a decade before
Speaker 1: most folks would even have heard of the Internet at
Speaker 1: that point, Because I would argue it was the World
Speaker 1: Wide Web that introduced a lot of people to the
Speaker 1: concept of the Internet, so much so that for a
Speaker 1: lot of folks the two are synonymous, although the World
Speaker 1: Wide Web is just one set of services that exists
Speaker 1: on top of the Internet. Before the DNS, engineers working
Speaker 1: on ARPINET had established a sort of catalog to keep
Speaker 1: track of network infrastructure, sockets, addresses, and other words. John
Speaker 1: Postel and Joyce K Reynolds were chiefly responsible for keeping
Speaker 1: track of IP addresses from the earliest days, which is
Speaker 1: pretty wild because this was just kind of a side
Speaker 1: quest to their main responsibilities. It wasn't their job to
Speaker 1: do this, they did it in addition to their jobs.
Speaker 1: Somewhat orally, a department that ultimately became known as the
Speaker 1: Internet Assigned Numbers Authority or IANA would start to take
Speaker 1: form now according to various RFCs, which stands for Request
Speaker 1: for Comments. RFCs are in large part the documentation the
Speaker 1: historical documents that help us keep track of how the
Speaker 1: Internet gradually took shape, and they are hard to follow
Speaker 1: if you're not an engineer, and I'm not. They are
Speaker 1: a challenge to follow because they weren't necessarily written to
Speaker 1: be like a historical documentation, they were an ongoing discussion
Speaker 1: among the various people working on the systems to keep
Speaker 1: up with what's going on and to share developments. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the first appearance of ia in A in an RFC
Speaker 1: documentation was somewhere in the late nineteen eighties. But those
Speaker 1: very same documents that mention ia in a by name
Speaker 1: for the time say essentially that the department, or the
Speaker 1: functions at least were as old as arpinnet itself. The
Speaker 1: engineers just hadn't documented an official name for it for
Speaker 1: a couple of decades now. In addition to Postel's work,
Speaker 1: an engineer named Elizabeth Feinler developed a directory of numerical
Speaker 1: addresses reference through a list of host names and a
Speaker 1: document titled hosts dot txt. Feindler would manually add host
Speaker 1: names and their assigned numeric addresses to the directory, and
Speaker 1: it was Feinler's department that gradually developed the idea for
Speaker 1: domain names to make it easier for humans to work
Speaker 1: with the system instead of having to do this cross referencing,
Speaker 1: where you know, you look up a host name, like
Speaker 1: you know what host name you want to send information to,
Speaker 1: so you look it up in this directory so you
Speaker 1: can find the IP address you need to use in
Speaker 1: order to send the information there. Well, that's already complicated
Speaker 1: enough just on its own, but it was getting far
Speaker 1: more complicated as more machines were joining the network. You know,
Speaker 1: each time a new machine joins the network, it adds
Speaker 1: to the complexity of the overall system. That complexity would
Speaker 1: grow considerably throughout the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties. Now,
Speaker 1: for a long time, those machines joining the networks were
Speaker 1: either from research institutions, universities and colleges, or government agencies,
Speaker 1: including the military, And in fact, the military and large
Speaker 1: part was funding a lot of the work going into this.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind, you know, ARPINET started as a defense project,
Speaker 1: right DARPA what is today called DARPA. Back in the day,
Speaker 1: it was called ARPA. So it all started as a
Speaker 1: defense thing, and for the longest time, the government oversaw stuff.
Speaker 1: But gradually that would start to shift as more, you know,
Speaker 1: non government folks were starting to get involved in the network.
Speaker 1: John Postel continued to oversee the process of assigning names
Speaker 1: and addresses up to the late nineteen nineties, which is
Speaker 1: pretty phenomenal because by then you're getting into the dot
Speaker 1: com days. But around ninety seven, the United States government
Speaker 1: stepped in. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration or NTIA
Speaker 1: we'll talk about them later, which itself is part of
Speaker 1: the US Department of Commerce, sought to create a new
Speaker 1: nonprofit organization that would oversee functions such as assigning DNS
Speaker 1: addresses and that kind of thing. In late nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: it created the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
Speaker 1: or ICON i CAN if you prefer ICA n N.
Speaker 1: Now i CAN assumed the responsibility of overseeing the DNS
Speaker 1: functions of IANA IAANA. So lots of acronyms in this too.
Speaker 1: I'm apologizing for that, but you know I wasn't the
Speaker 1: one who came up with him. So John Postel was
Speaker 1: meant to be the chief technology officer for i CAN,
Speaker 1: but sadly he passed away following a surgical procedure and
Speaker 1: he died about a month after i CAN was first incorporated. Okay,
Speaker 1: but now we have to talk about another organization that
Speaker 1: was operating at the same time as all the stuff
Speaker 1: I just mentioned. This is where Elizabeth Feindler comes back
Speaker 1: into it, and this would be the Network Information Center
Speaker 1: the NIC or NICK, later known as INTERNICK. This organization
Speaker 1: grew out of the Stanford Research Institute, which is now
Speaker 1: known as SRI International. And I'm just going to refer
Speaker 1: to it as INTERNICK as a matter of convenience, but
Speaker 1: it actually didn't get that name until like the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to use that name rather than switching
Speaker 1: back and forth because we're already going to have so
Speaker 1: many different names and acronyms in this and initialisms. So
Speaker 1: internick was kind of like a reference library. It maintained
Speaker 1: a directory of address numbers and published them to the
Speaker 1: network at large, and it handled actual registration requests. So
Speaker 1: this was Elizabeth Feindler's group. Stanford oversaw Internet until night
Speaker 1: teen ninety one, and at that point the department changed hands.
Speaker 1: And this is bringing us ever closer to VERI sign.
Speaker 1: We're not there yet, but we're getting closer. So the
Speaker 1: company that would take over Internet in nineteen ninety one
Speaker 1: was called Network Solutions. Now, technically the US government gave
Speaker 1: the job of overseeing Internet to another company called Government
Speaker 1: Systems Incorporated, But then Government Systems turned around and subcontracted
Speaker 1: the work to Network Solutions. This is a great business
Speaker 1: to get in. By the way, if you can be
Speaker 1: a business that lands huge contracts and then you subcontract
Speaker 1: that work to someone else and you just keep the difference, man,
Speaker 1: what a racket. Not saying that government systems was a racket,
Speaker 1: but golly sure, I sure could get into that biz anyway.
Speaker 1: So Network Solutions got its start in nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 1: as a consulting company in the tech sector, and in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three it won a bid to become the
Speaker 1: exclusive register nation services provider for non military entities wishing
Speaker 1: to register a domain on the Internet. It won this
Speaker 1: bid by being using by following a very very sound strategy,
Speaker 1: being the only company that actually bid for the gig. Now,
Speaker 1: this meant that Network Solutions was the one and only
Speaker 1: place someone could go to if they wanted to register
Speaker 1: a TLD that was in the dot org, dot net
Speaker 1: and dot com categories. Network Solutions had a monopoly on
Speaker 1: that business. Now, I call it a business, but in truth,
Speaker 1: at the time it wasn't really a business because Network
Speaker 1: Solutions was not allowed to charge for domain name registrations.
Speaker 1: Yet it was still a free service ultimately provided by
Speaker 1: the government, so the government was essentially paying this company
Speaker 1: Government Systems, which in turn was paying Network Solutions to
Speaker 1: oversee this process. But they weren't turning people into customers.
Speaker 1: They were providing a service for free that was government funded.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety five, another company called Science Applications International
Speaker 1: Corporation or SAIC, or as I prefer to call them, PSYCH,
Speaker 1: they acquired Network Solutions for four point seven million dollars.
Speaker 1: Keep that number in mind, because holy cats, will that
Speaker 1: be a world of difference in just five years. Further
Speaker 1: into this history, not long after PSYCH took over control
Speaker 1: of Network Solutions, the National Science Foundation or NSF, gave
Speaker 1: PSYCH and therefore Network Solutions, the power to charge a
Speaker 1: fee for registering domain names. This is where things start
Speaker 1: to shift, where now it is a business. Before it
Speaker 1: was a service that was government funded. Now it's a
Speaker 1: business where Network Solutions can charge a fee in order
Speaker 1: to register a domain name to customers. Not at that point,
Speaker 1: Network Solutions began to charge applicants a one hundred dollars
Speaker 1: and for one hundred dollars you could register a domain
Speaker 1: name for a period of two years, and after two
Speaker 1: years you would need to renew your registration. Thirty percent
Speaker 1: of the fee that Network Solutions charged would end up
Speaker 1: going to the National Science Foundation in SF to help
Speaker 1: fund other services. But this rubbed people the wrong way
Speaker 1: because it was a single service provider. Here there was
Speaker 1: no competition. You couldn't go anywhere else to register a
Speaker 1: top level domain URL or address. So in nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: seven a lawsuit argued that Network Solutions was in fact
Speaker 1: a monopoly and because thirty percent of the fees being
Speaker 1: paid to Network Solutions were going to a government agency,
Speaker 1: that amounted to illegal taxation. So Network Solutions ended up
Speaker 1: ending its payments out to the NSF. It could still
Speaker 1: charge for registration, but that thirty percent would go to NSF. Thankfully,
Speaker 1: that also meant that at least initially, the cost for
Speaker 1: registering a domain dropped by thirty percent, so it became
Speaker 1: seventy dollars for two years before you needed to renew.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen ninety eight, i CAN was given the
Speaker 1: authority to oversee the dns, and i CAN chose Surprise
Speaker 1: Surprise Network Solutions to continue to have this exclusive holdover
Speaker 1: dot net, dot Oregon, dot Com TLDs. So for Network Solutions,
Speaker 1: nothing really changed other than i CAN became the new
Speaker 1: authority overseeing this rather than specifically the NSF. Not that
Speaker 1: the NSF would be uninvolved, but you get the point,
Speaker 1: all right. So this holds true for a couple of years.
Speaker 1: We skip ahead to two thousand. It's the heady days
Speaker 1: of the dot com boom, before the bubble had actually burst,
Speaker 1: and numerous companies would find themselves struggling to stay in business.
Speaker 1: But that's when Network Solutions got a new owner, and
Speaker 1: this is where or VeriSign finally comes into play. So
Speaker 1: VeriSign got its start back in nineteen ninety five, so
Speaker 1: it was a relatively young company. It was only five
Speaker 1: years old when it made this move, and it had
Speaker 1: started off as a provider of certification services, and by
Speaker 1: that I mean Internet certification services. So you know that
Speaker 1: when you sign on to a website and you see
Speaker 1: that little padlock symbol up in your urlbar, that padlock
Speaker 1: symbol indicates that the site you're visiting is protecting the
Speaker 1: data traffic between you and that website through encryption, meaning
Speaker 1: that if anyone else snooped in on your data transfers
Speaker 1: to that website, all they would get was encrypted data,
Speaker 1: which wouldn't mean anything to them, at least assuming the
Speaker 1: encryption is really good. The padlock shows that the protection
Speaker 1: is certified, meaning some other authority has analyzed and certified
Speaker 1: that the process is secure. VeriSign one of the companies
Speaker 1: that provided that kind of certification, thus ensuring that digital
Speaker 1: commerce could occur safely over the internet. Keep in mind,
Speaker 1: back in nineteen ninety five, commerce online was a new
Speaker 1: and scary idea. People were understandably reticent to just plug
Speaker 1: their credit card numbers into a computer. You never knew
Speaker 1: who might get hold of that information. So companies like
Speaker 1: VeriSign would end up playing a really important part in
Speaker 1: establishing a safe and secure infrastructure to allow online commerce
Speaker 1: to actually become a thing. And business must have been
Speaker 1: pretty darn good, because in two thousand, VeriSign made a
Speaker 1: huge move and acquired Network Solutions from Psych for the
Speaker 1: princely sum of twenty one billion with a B dollars. Now,
Speaker 1: remember Psych Saic had purchased Network Solutions for less than
Speaker 1: five million with an M dollars back in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: then sold it five years later for twenty one billion dollars. That,
Speaker 1: my friends, is a heck of a return on investment.
Speaker 1: But it's not as clear as all that it's not
Speaker 1: as amazing a turnaround as that. I mean, it is
Speaker 1: an amazing turnaround, But to be honest, SAIC had actually
Speaker 1: been selling off portions of its ownership, like it had
Speaker 1: been selling off percentages of its stake in Network Solutions
Speaker 1: to other parties since it had acquired the company in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five. So while SAIC saw an enormous payout
Speaker 1: due to this acquisition, it wasn't as impressive as it
Speaker 1: would have been if, in fact, it held full ownership
Speaker 1: of Network Solutions at that point. But you get the idea,
Speaker 1: you know, four point seven million to twenty one billion
Speaker 1: in five years phenomenal. It also says a lot that
Speaker 1: the original version of Network Solutions was essentially a government
Speaker 1: funded and thus government restricted business, So it was also
Speaker 1: a very different world in ninety five than it was
Speaker 1: in two thousand. All Right, we're going to take another
Speaker 1: quick break. When we come back, we'll talk more about
Speaker 1: VeriSign and the current concerns surrounding the company. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back. So before the break, we talked about how
Speaker 1: VeriSign comes in and buys Network Solutions, and by the
Speaker 1: transitive property of ownership, VeriSign becomes the new exclusive keeper
Speaker 1: of the dot com, dot net and dot org TLD's
Speaker 1: top level domains. That's when the Security is in Exchange
Speaker 1: Commission where SEC took an interest in VeriSign. So for
Speaker 1: a while, Network Solutions had been operating two distinct but
Speaker 1: related businesses. Business number one was to serve as a registry.
Speaker 1: Now essentially, a registry serves as a database, and it
Speaker 1: could sell top level main addresses wholesale to registrars. Registrars
Speaker 1: could then sell domain names or domain name registrations to customers. However,
Speaker 1: Network Solutions was also acting as a registrar itself, so
Speaker 1: it's both a registry and a registrar. The SEC felt
Speaker 1: this was way too much power concentrated into a single organization,
Speaker 1: and it could use its monopolistic holdover the dot com,
Speaker 1: dot net and dot org TLDs to create predatory pricing.
Speaker 1: So VeriSign sold off its registrar business and held onto
Speaker 1: the registry part. Now, VeriSign could sell top level domains
Speaker 1: wholesale to registrars, and the registrars in turn could sell
Speaker 1: those two customers. So effectively, this meant VeriSign sold off
Speaker 1: part of Network Solutions to another company called Pivotal Equity Groups.
Speaker 1: So we'll say by by to Network Solutions from this
Speaker 1: point forward. Just know that the services that Networkstions provided,
Speaker 1: at least regarding being a registry, are now verisigns. So
Speaker 1: VeriSign would remain the sole organization ultimately in charge of
Speaker 1: those dot com TLDs. And that's where the current situation
Speaker 1: comes back into play. So at the heart of the
Speaker 1: issue is a change in the rules that VeriSign has
Speaker 1: to follow when it comes to how much it can
Speaker 1: charge customers for registering TLDs. Keep in mind this is
Speaker 1: because the government, the US government, has been heavily involved
Speaker 1: in this from the beginning. Initially, the predecessor to averisign
Speaker 1: was not allowed to charge for registering top level domain names.
Speaker 1: You couldn't do it. It was all government provided. But the
Speaker 1: slow transition from the Internet being a government owned and
Speaker 1: operated entity to a global market entity unto itself meant
Speaker 1: that things had to change. So there were still rules
Speaker 1: in place to keep VeriSign or its predecessor from charging
Speaker 1: out the wazoo. Because being a single company in charge
Speaker 1: of this this particular commodity, the dot com TLDs, there
Speaker 1: needed to be some restrictions otherwise, because the dot com
Speaker 1: domain names are so valuable, you would end up getting
Speaker 1: charged ridiculous amounts of money in order to register your
Speaker 1: domain name. You might still get that, but that's because
Speaker 1: the registrar, not the registry. So at the heart of
Speaker 1: the current matter is a change in the rules that
Speaker 1: VeriSign has to follow when it comes to how much
Speaker 1: it charges its customers for registering TLDs. Now, according to
Speaker 1: a letter from Senator Warren and Representative Nadler, quote, VeriSign
Speaker 1: is exploiting its monopoly power to charge millions of users
Speaker 1: excessive prices for registering a dot Com top level domain.
Speaker 1: VeriSign hasn't changed or in improved its services. It has
Speaker 1: simply raised prices because it holds a government insured monopoly
Speaker 1: end quote now. Essentially, during the previous Trump administration, the
Speaker 1: government eased off a little bit on the restrictions it
Speaker 1: had placed over how much VeriSign was allowed to charge customers.
Speaker 1: So the company, once these restrictions were gone, increased its prices. Now,
Speaker 1: according to the letter from the politicians I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: that increase was around thirty percent, So the prices went
Speaker 1: up by thirty percent but the services provided hadn't changed
Speaker 1: in any material way, So you're paying thirty percent more
Speaker 1: for the exact same service you had earlier. Nothing else
Speaker 1: has improved or been fleshed out further. Again, this is
Speaker 1: according to their letter, So essentially, Warren and Nadler are saying,
Speaker 1: you're charging more for the same services, and because you
Speaker 1: have a monopoly, there's nowhere else for customers to go,
Speaker 1: so this amounts to price gouging. Now, as you might imagine,
Speaker 1: various design objects to the way that this has been framed.
Speaker 1: The company claims that a quote small, self interested group
Speaker 1: of domain name investors end quote are behind all this.
Speaker 1: That you know, this isn't a real public issue. It's
Speaker 1: something that some people who have a vested interest in
Speaker 1: the matter are pursuing because they have the potential to
Speaker 1: make a lot of money if things change. But things
Speaker 1: shouldn't change because they're not inherently unfair, according to VeriSign,
Speaker 1: and also says that the complaints the politicians are raising
Speaker 1: echo some so called inaccuracies around the TLD registry business. Also,
Speaker 1: VeriSign says there are alternatives to dot com in the
Speaker 1: TLD space, so that means that VeriSign's not operating a monopoly,
Speaker 1: and I guess that's an argument. I mean, you could
Speaker 1: say VeriSign does have a monopolistic holdover dot com domains.
Speaker 1: That's indisputable. They do. They're the soul registry for dot com.
Speaker 1: But it's also true that there are other registries out
Speaker 1: there for other kinds of TLDs. So, for example, if
Speaker 1: you wanted to register a domain that had a dot
Speaker 1: tv as its top level domain, well then you would
Speaker 1: have to go through go Daddy registry. By the way,
Speaker 1: technically dot tv is an Internet country Code top level
Speaker 1: domain and it's for TAVALU, but a lot of sites
Speaker 1: use dot TV because TV can also mean television. Thus
Speaker 1: you have things like dropout TV. Complicating matters is the
Speaker 1: fact that I can ultimately has the authority to reject
Speaker 1: price hikes in the Domain Name Registry Services space, and
Speaker 1: this comes from the NTIA. So hang on, if I
Speaker 1: can is able to reject price hikes, then where's the problem?
Speaker 1: Because yes, you do have VeriSign as an entity that
Speaker 1: has exclusive rights to the dot Com registry business. However,
Speaker 1: if a nonprofit organization that's closely associated with the US
Speaker 1: government ultimately has authority to reject price increases. Doesn't that
Speaker 1: solve things? Well, not so fast, because back in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: VeriSign and i CAN signed an agreement in which VeriSign
Speaker 1: was allowed to increase prices to a certain maximum and
Speaker 1: in return, i CAN would receive twenty million dollars over
Speaker 1: the course of five years. Now, Warren and Nadler are
Speaker 1: saying this appears to be a case of collusion, where
Speaker 1: these two organizations have colluded and created a mutually beneficial
Speaker 1: relationship that is ultimately predating upon customers. So the customers
Speaker 1: are unfairly burdened with price increases and they have no recourse,
Speaker 1: they have no competing service they can go to to
Speaker 1: get a dot com top level domain, and they're not
Speaker 1: getting an improvement in their services now. As wireds Joel
Speaker 1: khalely reported back in late November, I think it was
Speaker 1: November twenty second, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration or
Speaker 1: NTIA was set to renew this agreement with VeriSign after
Speaker 1: a review on November thirty, and that meant with this
Speaker 1: review that there would actually be a chance that new
Speaker 1: pricing rules could come into play and that VeriSign would
Speaker 1: be forced to lower prices, and that these rules would
Speaker 1: actually be in effect for six years, which means they'd
Speaker 1: actually remain in place for the entirety of the second
Speaker 1: Trump administration, because that lasts four years. But nothing really
Speaker 1: turned out that way, and why was that? Well, the
Speaker 1: NTIA renewed the agreement with VeriSign and did nothing to
Speaker 1: address the price issues, and in a release, the NTIA
Speaker 1: said it really wished it could have done something. Cush gosh,
Speaker 1: darn it, what a sticky wicket, which is not a
Speaker 1: very satisfying conclusion to this story. As Andrew Allmann of
Speaker 1: Domain name Wire put it, the nt IA essentially said, golly,
Speaker 1: we really wish we could do something, but sadly, we
Speaker 1: just don't have the authority to set dot com domain prices.
Speaker 1: And here's the kicker, according to Aliman, quote, this statement
Speaker 1: is strange because it is the NTIA that literally sets
Speaker 1: a cap on dot com prices end quote. So yeah,
Speaker 1: the government organization is saying we don't have the authority
Speaker 1: to do the thing we're authorized to do. Now, Aliman
Speaker 1: actually extends some understanding toward the NTIA. It's just that
Speaker 1: perhaps the issue is really that because of the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty agreement between VeriSign and I can the NTIA is
Speaker 1: not able to set a cap on prices without actual
Speaker 1: cooperation from VeriSign itself, and obviously VeriSign has a vested
Speaker 1: interest in not creating lower price caps for its services.
Speaker 1: Like a business is not gonna sit there and say, oh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right, I should charge less for this thing that
Speaker 1: you can own only get from me, and I have
Speaker 1: all the leverage here, so obviously I should lower my prices.
Speaker 1: So vera Sign said, you know what, we're going to
Speaker 1: decline that at least that's that's the assumption that that's
Speaker 1: why the NTIA was unable to put in new price
Speaker 1: caps on the TLD registration business or registry business. The
Speaker 1: NTIA did lament that the whole pricing situation is pretty
Speaker 1: darn messed up from the wholesale side of the registry
Speaker 1: business all the way downstream to the customer, and that
Speaker 1: ultimately customers are kind of at the mercy of the
Speaker 1: various companies within the industry. You know, gosh darn it,
Speaker 1: if only the government had the authority to actually address
Speaker 1: potentially unfair business practices. Anyway, that's where we stand now
Speaker 1: with one company ultimately sitting on a vault of dot
Speaker 1: com TLDs and considering it was Trump's first administration that
Speaker 1: gave VeriSign more freedom to increase prices in the first place,
Speaker 1: I imagine we're not going to see any efforts to
Speaker 1: curb costs in the near future. So this is kind
Speaker 1: of where we're at. And I thought it was interesting
Speaker 1: that there was this move against verisigns so late in
Speaker 1: the game, especially since ultimately you can trace the whole
Speaker 1: history of this back to how the government handled the
Speaker 1: Internet in the early days, Like this wasn't a private
Speaker 1: company or even a publicly traded company that created the situation.
Speaker 1: This was a situation created by the US government that
Speaker 1: now the US government is like, h this isn't ideal.
Speaker 1: Some might have seen this as a way for Democrat
Speaker 1: leaders to try and stick it to the Trump administration
Speaker 1: by getting some policy changes in at the last minute,
Speaker 1: changes that would last six years, so that it would
Speaker 1: kind of be a thorn in the side, or at
Speaker 1: least a little thumb of the nose at Republican leaders
Speaker 1: because they're going to be in charge for the next
Speaker 1: several years. But it didn't work. Like that didn't that's
Speaker 1: not how it turned out. So if that was an attempt,
Speaker 1: it failed, and it just means that I think it's
Speaker 1: going to be business as usual for the near future. Heck,
Speaker 1: it might end up meaning that ultimately we have to
Speaker 1: pay even more for the whole registration process, because if
Speaker 1: varsign can increase prices again I'm sure it will, that
Speaker 1: will pass costs down to the registrars, who will then
Speaker 1: pass those costs down to customers because everyone needs to
Speaker 1: make some scratch off of those transactions. And ultimately it
Speaker 1: means that the consumer at the end of the line
Speaker 1: ends up bearing the expense. So fun times. But that's it.
Speaker 1: That's a quick explanation and a very very high level
Speaker 1: explanation of what's going on on the business side of
Speaker 1: domain names. As I said, it is far more complicated
Speaker 1: than what I've talked about here, both on a technical
Speaker 1: level and from a corporate level or an administration level,
Speaker 1: And if you are interested, there are numerous resources out
Speaker 1: there that go into far more detail about how the
Speaker 1: domain name system took shape over years of tweaking and experimentation,
Speaker 1: how the administration of the dns changed over time, and
Speaker 1: the competing ideas that ultimately didn't make it, whereas the
Speaker 1: DNS did. All of that is documented in different places online.
Speaker 1: It is fascinating, but it's a huge amount of information
Speaker 1: and far too much for me to tackle on an
Speaker 1: episode of tech Stuff. But I hope you found this interesting.
Speaker 1: I hope you're all doing well, and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.