VeriSign's .com Win Guarantees Internet Stability

"I don't get it, what's wrong with my headline?" I asked.

My editor had called me into his office for "a little chat". That usually meant an extended passive-aggressive confrontation designed to slowly wear me down into a compliant, weeping mess.

"It's not so much the headline, son," my editor said. "It's the whole dang story."

I blinked.

"Sir?" I said. My editor likes to keep a formal office. He's strict, but we love him for it. "I'm not sure I follow you, sir."

"Well, look at this bit," he said, pushing a piece of paper across his desk. Underneath half a Bic's worth of blue ink, I could see that it was a hard copy of my article. There was a recent puncture wound through the center of the page.

"What exactly do you mean by 'Keeping control of .com in the hands of VeriSign ensures the stability and reliability of the internet.'? Do you see my problem with that?" my editor said.

"Nosir," I said. "VeriSign has been very clear that this .com story is not an argument about profits or monopolies or business models, it's about bringing stability to the internet by not only encouraging investment, but also by settling longstanding political uncertainties."

My editor sighed, and took his metal rule from his drawer.

"You don't think that maybe you bought into a carefully constructed lobbying and public relations campaign?" he asked, beginning to lightly tap the rule into the palm of his hand.

"Nosir," I said, eyeing the rule nervously. I still had the scars from the last time he used it.

"Tell me youngster, have you ever heard of the concept of 'framing the issue'?"

"Er... nosir."

"It's in the PR manual. It works on the principle that if you can dictate the terms of the debate, you've got a pretty good chance of winning it."

"I see sir."

"Governor Schwarzenegger used this tool notably during the California recall a couple years back," my editor continued, standing up and beginning to pace his office slowly. "By convincing people that the recall vote was actually a contest between himself and Governor Davis, Arnie was able to wipe the floor with his opponents when the actual gubernatorial election came around. Even that kid outa Different Strokes. Tell me, did you vote for Schwarzenegger?"

"Nosir. I'm British sir, they don't let me vote."

"Hmmm. But you pay taxes here? Taxation without representation. How ironic."

"Yessir."

"Framing issues is easy. There are various ways to go about it," my editor said, using the metal rule to slap his palm a little heavier now. "VeriSign used a very simple three-step method. They played it by the numbers. First, create a take-it-or-leave-it settlement deal. Second, convince everyone that bad things will happen if they don't take it. Third, convince everyone there's a hard deadline to make a decision."

"Step one is simple enough," he continued. "Companies do it all the time. Do you remember when you covered Oracle's hostile takeover of PeopleSoft a couple years back?"

"Yessir," I said. "Great story, sir. Lots of ink on that one."

"Indeed," my editor said. "And do you remember how many times Oracle made PeopleSoft's shareholders a 'best and final' offer?"

"Two or three, if I recall correctly, sir."

I had figured out where he was going, but I was still smiling dumbly, trying to figure out the best way to avoid the increasingly inevitable prospect of summary corporal punishment.

"Do you think maybe that when VeriSign said that the currently tabled contract was their 'best and final' offer, they may have been talking out of their lying asses?"

"I don't think so sir," I said. "I certainly wouldn't be comfortable publishing anything that accused a wealthy and litigious public company of being a bunch of lying bastards. Unless maybe I could pass it off as some kind of joke, protected by the First Amendment..."

But my editor had already moved onto Step Two.

"Step Two," he said. "You've convinced everyone there's an either/or decision to make. Now convince them that bad things will happen if they make the wrong choice. This is simply a case of throwing out a bunch of big numbers that reflect what an important decision it is. If it works properly, people will forget that what you're talking about has nothing whatsoever to do with the decision they have to make ."

"I don't understand," I said.

"You don't understand..."

"I don't understand, sir."

"Come on sonny, you covered the .net story last year. VeriSign followed exactly the same playbook for that process. It goes something like this:

Whiner: VeriSign should forfeit the .net contract, just for being generally Evil.

VeriSign: But there's EIGHT TRLLION DOLLARS of transactions that rely upon .net!!!

Whiner: Fuck! Really? I recant, I recant! Keep up the good work lads.

Do you see? The settlement and .com contract has fuck-all in it about making the internet more stable and reliable, but VeriSign framed the issue in such a way that people thought it did."

"But there are new and improved service-level agreements in the new .com contract," I complained, "ICANN gets to test .com's responsiveness every month, and VeriSign has to stay within certain performance parameters."

"Ah yes, you're referring to Appendix 7 of the new contract," my editor said. "The one that requires VeriSign to make sure that a DNS roundtrip is faster than 300 milliseconds."

"Yes, that's the one, sir."

"You don't think that meeting those targets will be about as easy as falling off a log, given that VeriSign has been bragging about resolution times below 10 milliseconds for at least the last two years? Given they set targets of 5 milliseconds or below in their .net bid last year? Might even be easier, given ICANN is doing its measurements from four of the DNS root server sites, as opposed to hosts that may more accurately reflect the user experience. You think maybe VeriSign is over-playing the improved performance card?"

"Yessir," I conceded, finally understanding the depth of my ignorance. "I can see how a lowly reporter such as myself could be fooled, but I can't imagine that any member of the ICANN board would be taken in by this for a second."

My editor put down his enforcement tool for a moment, picked up the hard copy of my article.

"What about this Qian guy, one of the ICANN directors who voted for the deal, " he said. "You quote him right here. He said 'paying a few more dollars for each registration to help the infrastructure become more sustainable and survivable from different kind of serious attacks is worthy'. Do you not think that indicates that at least one ICANN director thought he was voting in favor of stability?"

"I guess so, sir."

"Ok, on to Step Three," my editor said, picking up his metal rule again. "Convince everybody that there's a hard deadline to make the decision. Don't give them time to think too hard about it."

I had to protest at this point.

"Sir, I simply cannot believe that anybody on ICANN's board would vote in favor of this increasingly awful-looking deal purely because they thought it was the best and final offer, and that there was no time to negotiate further," I spluttered. "That would be absurd. They'd need to have been fed FUD by at least one member of the ICANN staff..."

My editor glared at me, picked up my article again.

"This Getschko guy? Another ICANN director? Okay, you quote him saying he's 'really not comfortable with many aspects of this settlement' and that he would 'really would like to have more time and room for negotiations on this'. For fuck's sake, son, you're quoting him saying he's voting in favor of the deal he doesn't like just because 'as the available information to us points, we are really restricted on time to take this decision'. You really don't think someone was leaning on him?"

"I see, sir," I said. "I guess it's possible that some people on the ICANN board felt pressured."

He swapped the article for the metal rule again.

"Ok, son, I want you to completely rewrite this article based on what you now know."

"Yessir."

"I think you've learned a valuable lesson today."

"Yessir."

"But we need to make sure you don't forget that lesson, don't we?"

"Yessir," I sniffed.

"You know I only do this because I love you," my editor said. "Now please put out your hands."