Versign CEO thinks that the core infrastructure of the net should be in private hands. I pretty much always argue aginst private-sector control of natural monopolies here on bubblegen, because once the firm grabs control of the monopoly, it has no incentive to ensure quality, or even maintain the network itself.
Think about it this way: the reason I haven't updated here in a day is because the place I'm staying while I'm here in Washington has a cable connection by Cox. The connection dropped for 24 hours - and Cox had no incentive to fix it, since they have a natural monopoly. They know they have me by the balls, essentially, since I need a cable modem (for now).
A lot of people are worried about the government making the net into a DRM deathstar where DHS ensures you have no privacy. I think the opposite is true: letting the private sector run the net almost forces them to monetize it ways that are extremely damaging to consumers, because monetizing it in the first place will be very difficult. In short: private-sector net is a really, really bad idea.
Statements like this should really scare you:
"
Are you looking to monetize DNS lookups?
No. That base level of DNS (domain name system) response is an obligation we took on when we inherited that contract. But it would be commercially unreasonable for anyone to suggest that we shouldn't be allowed to build
incremental services on top of that if they deliver value."