Man, I just get angry with people this sloppy. How can you write:
"Now, Morris is the first to admit that this wasn’t exactly a true scientific experiment, but you know what? That’s okay! Because the findings are still fascinating."
without dying of embarrassment? It is equivalent to:
"Hey, this next bit might not be true but that doesn't matter because it's a good story!"
Its just offensive to so blatantly mention the unreliability of the findings and then go on to dismiss the notion of uncertainty entirely in the remaining text. Why did he even put in that mention?!
I think the issue is that ICANN belives it has the right to contact information to the people it has granted a licence of a domain. I believe Whois information isn't really intended for the end users, but rather the administrators of the DNS system.
How? By finding bugs in the interface that allows hostile users to set new values for the email address at the registrar and using this for triggering the 15 days period?
Why need it be a test? If verification just needs a click on a link it doesn't seem very onerous to require that click. If the mail doesn't arrive, you know you have a problem with a deadline NOW, instead of a randomly appearing problem in the future. The former certainly seems better.
To me, one issue seems to be that ICANN dares to demand of the registrar that they must verify the contact information that is REQUIRED to be present in a registration... that's not really a sane stance to have when you sell a subscription to what is basically an identity, so lets put that aside.
One other complains is that this verification procedure is really weak: "just send a mail with a link to the address provided"
Imagine if ICANN changed their rules so that a more substantial verification process of the MANDATORY fields was required? Like if they didn't make it optional to verify the telephone number, what would easyDNS do then? From their post, I presume they would go insane, declare Holy war on the ICANN, and then start assaulting ICANN officers with the sharp edges of their ibook 12"
They also complain that its a huge phishing opportunity because they must send mails with a link for people to click, but according to the ICANN spec they link to the actual requirement is[1]:
"""
[...] sending an email requiring an affirmative response through a tool-based authentication method such as providing a unique code that must be returned in a manner designated by the Registrar
"""
So the mails looking very phish-y is entirely their their own choice, the spec does not mandate that the title is "Look at these funny pictures, friend" or anything.
Finally, they complain this will lead to a lot of big sites going down because they are forced to suspend domains if people don't take certain action within a certain time (although they don't clearly argue that the time is too short or something like that). But big sites already go down because the dns owner has been negligent with their interactions with their registrar, like failing to pay their fees for instance.