Outrage as surfers' voices are silenced

NEWS VeriSign has enraged net users around the world by shutting down a popular discussion group that regularly criticised its policies. Yesterday Verisign shut down the "Domain-Policy" list, in which users could debate controversial issues regarding the allocation of internet names. The domain name issue has been growing increasingly controversial since the job of allocation was handed over to the commercial sector. The continued delay in creating new top-level domains such as dot-shop and dot-game has irritated web users and prompted a range of alternative providers to launch conflicting unofficial versions. The renewal of VeriSign's contract to administer the lucrative dot-com database for another six years has also angered netizens. Many surfers used the list as a place to vent their spleen at VeriSign's behaviour. As one anonymous contributor to the ICANN.BLOG discussion group wrote, "Personally, I find this very disappointing. The Domain-Policy list has always been noisy, but it's also been a great place to get information on the arcane issues of domain name administration. "I've always viewed it as a credit to NSI [Network Solutions], Verisign and all of its employees that it both sponsored the list and actively participated in it," he added. A VeriSign spokesman said: "When we set up this list in 1996 there was nowhere to discuss the technical and mundane issues around domain name allocation. Since the list was set up there has been a massive increase in the number of forums for discussing this issue, so we felt the list was no longer necessary." He denied that the list had been shut down for being too critical. "If we were going to shut the list down because of negative comments we would have done it years ago," he said.