Most ICANNers have suspected for years that Free2Innovate's "SForrest" was actually a paid PR blogger retained by Verisign. Kevin Muphy is the first to make this public, with this post on his weblog.

Kevin details how he came to know that blogger-for-hire Bill Hobbs ("I am self-employed and work in media relations and also consult with large corporations on the use of weblogs as public relations tools.") is actually Steve Forrest.  I found out via a different means. If you knock around a little bit in the archives of Free2Innovate, sooner or later you'll hit the home directory and float over to Bill Hobbs' website. The two web sites are controlled by the same person (or at least they were last year when I checked). So call this post a "second source" for Kevin's outing of "sforrest."

The real reason you know that "sforrest" isn't a real person, however, is because he says things that no real person could believe. I'll post more about this during the coming week, as the ICANN blog takes a closer look at the way Verisign's blogger has tried to shape public opinion of his apparent client.