With the US government putting out a call for comments on whether DNSSEC should be adopted and who should have the master keys to the root zone file, Wired says there are two organisations who want the job - ICANN and VeriSign.
Internet experts are siding overwhelmingly with ICANN says Wired. One,
Rob Seastrom who is on the ARIN board, said "The whole concept of
signing is that you are attesting that this is the right data, so it
seems to me, the proper organization to sign the data is the one that
created it," or ICANN. Seastrom also says that as a result of the "Site
Finder" debacle in 2003, "VeriSign would be completely nonstarter [as
root signer] for any one that remembers that hack," Seastrom said,
adding that any for-profit entity with financial interests in the
contents of the zone file should be not be signing it. Other supporters
of ICANN for the right to have the master keys to the zone root file
are Vint Cerf and Bill Woodcock, research director at the Packet
Clearing House. It appears Wired could find no supporters for
VeriSign's proposal.To read this Wired article in full, see blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/who-should-sign.html.