http://www.business2.com/articles/mag/0,1640,12301,FF.html
The Man Who Bought The Internet Stratton Sclavos increasingly runs the Web. His company, Verisign, has erected cyberspace's largest toll booth and is now poised By Fred Vogelstein, June 2001 Issue
A goofy, eight-minute animation on the Web depicts a certain businessman as the devil, hell-bent on taking over the Internet. No, it's not Bill Gates or Steve Case but somebody called Stratton Sclavos. If you visit www.paradigm.nu/icann, you'll see Sclavos' face superimposed on a cartoon figure, horns jutting from his head; he swaggers around the screen, pitchfork in hand, talking about all the money he's going to make and uttering his signature line: "Muhahahahahahahahaha." The animation is becoming a cult classic for the diehard tech set. Its creator, Kendall Dawson, a Massachusetts software developer, says it's been viewed nearly 35,000 times since he posted it on April 28. Hollywood hasn't called, but someone from Mexico has. "He wants to help me translate the thing into Spanish," Dawson says. So who is Stratton Sclavos, and why do so many Netheads think he's the archfiend? The answer is that Sclavos and his company, Verisign, increasingly run the Internet. Think we're exaggerating? Consider this: Virtually every time you surf the Net, you run into one of his servers. Has your Website failed or been hacked recently? There's a good chance his company knew about the problem before you did. Do you have a domain name? He probably sold it to you. Bought anything online lately? He owns the business of making sure that no one steals your credit card number. And once you made your purchase, his company was probably responsible for aggregating that payment with other transactions and funneling them to the right banks and payment processors.
It's all part of Sclavos' master plan to build what he calls cyberspace's "first utility"--a company that handles all the boring but complicated and necessary details of life in the Internet Age. In effect, Sclavos has erected the Web's largest toll booth;
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