IP: SSL Certificate "Monopoly" Bears Financial Fruit

jamesd at echeque.com jamesd at echeque.com
Wed Jul 10 18:48:27 EDT 2002


    --
On 6 Jul 2002 at 9:33, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
> 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.

IE comes preloaded with about 34 root certificate authorities, and
it is easy for the end user to add more, to add more in batches.
Anyone can coerce open SSL to generate any certificates he
pleases, with some work.

Why is not someone else issuing certificates?

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
     6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
     FgD9xqiaNt/GIr99+cDvezUuY9K7pVf/sr8sYLtx
     2U+1rnhprPRzvE4aLRCq4ADtyF4DDrnAKjbwHgbFn


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