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IP: SSL Certificate "Monopoly" Bears Financial Fruit
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Fri, 05 Jul 2002 17:56:09 -0400
------ Forwarded Message From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com> Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2002 11:35:20 -0700 (PDT) To: dave () farber net Cc: lauren () vortex com Subject: SSL Certificate "Monopoly" Bears Financial Fruit Dave, As you know, the underlying core of most "secure" transactions on the Internet involves SSL Certificates. The effective market for these certificates (I'll leave the details of how they function as an exercise to readers) at one time boiled down to two firms -- VeriSign and Thawte. Between them, they controlled virtually the entire market, and while it is theoretically possible to create your own certificates, most widely-deployed commercial applications will not accept the "homemade" variety in a practical manner. VeriSign then purchased Thawte for an immense sum, becoming effectively the single source for widely acceptable SSL certs, along with being the mother of all dot-com domain registration entities. While Thawte theoretically continued to operate with its own pricing schedules (that remained lower than VeriSign's), it still appeared likely that the merger would do nothing to increase competition and lower prices in the SSL cert marketplace. Thawte has now announced a round of major price increases. New cert prices appear to have almost doubled, and renewals have increased more than 50%. While Thawte proclaims this is their first price increase in five years, this comes at a time when we should be seeing *increased* competition and *lower* prices for such virtual products, not such price increases. But of course, in an effective monopoly environment, it's your way or the highway, so this should have been entirely expected. For anyone who might doubt the big bucks involved, note that the founder of Thawte, South African Mark Shuttleworth, was the most recent space tourist, paying the Russian space program a reported $20 million for a jaunt up to the taxpayer-funded international space station. Now that's entertainment. --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein lauren () pfir org or lauren () vortex com or lauren () privacyforum org Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 Co-Founder, PFIR - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org Co-Founder, Fact Squad - http://www.factsquad.org Co-Founder, URIICA - Union for Representative International Internet Cooperation and Analysis - http://www.uriica.org Moderator, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy ------ End of Forwarded Message For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- IP: SSL Certificate "Monopoly" Bears Financial Fruit Dave Farber (Jul 05)