There is no doubt that as Dave Winer says regarding the sale of weblogs.com that Verisign has the infrastructure management capability to manage Weblogs.com ping services. And no doubt as he and others have pointed out that something had to be done -- the infrastructure and management needs were going to have to be addressed sooner or later for the good of the community. I am glad that he has managed to get some money for his tireless innovation and bootstrapping efforts.
I have some concerns though. Verisign have the capability to manage this resource but do they have the ethics? Verisign's claim seems to be that they will continue to offer the same "free" service but will generate revenue with unspecified "value added services". Remember this is the same organization that was "Domain Slamming" very recently. They also charged exorbitant domain registration fees until they were forced to give up the monopoly. They have been involved in a number of other ethically questionable practices over the years.
I think the community will have to be extra vigilant to make sure that Verisign does not fall back to questionable monopoly practices that they have displayed in the past -- because here we are again. Verisign is in charge of some of the critical plumbing of the web.
