VeriSign Sued Over SiteFinder Service 403
dmehus writes "It was only a matter of time, the pundits said, and they were right. Popular Enterprises, LLC., an Orlando, Florida based cybersquatting so-called 'search services' company, has filed a lawsuit in Orlando federal court against VeriSign, Inc. over VeriSign's controversial SiteFinder 'service.' While PopularEnterprises has had a dodgy history of buying up thousands of expired domain names and redirecting them to its Netster.com commercial "search services" site, the lawsuit is most likely a good thing, as it provides one more avenue to pursue in getting VeriSign to terminate SiteFinder. According to the lawsuit, the company contends alleges antitrust violations, unfair competition and violations of the Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. It asks the court to order VeriSign to put a halt to the service. VeriSign spokesperson Brian O'Shaughnessy said the company has not yet seen the lawsuit and that it doesn't comment on pending litigation."
Arrrrrr! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Arrrrrr! (Score:4, Funny)
Talk like a pirate day [talklikeapirate.com]
Nice tactic. (Score:5, Informative)
Arguing that they get for free what other companies must pay for is probably one of the easier arguments for win, since it proves itself nearly by definition.
I applaud the jackass who pays to abuse typos. At least they've finally proven their worth.
I dunno about that. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nice tactic. (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.petitiononline.com/icanndns/ [petitiononline.com]
comparison (Score:5, Funny)
- most hated company on the internet
- most stupid business moves
- most obvious 'shoot self in foot' maneuvre
I expect that slashdot would implode if SCO sued Verisign for this maneuvre. Do you cheer because one of them will lose? Or groan because one will win?
Re:comparison (Score:4, Funny)
Cheer, because both of them would be wasting money on a lawsuit.
Cry, if that lawsuit provided precedent for either of their parasitic business models.
Re:comparison (Score:3, Funny)
Suggestion: broken ribbon protest (Score:4, Interesting)
Y'know those "ribbon" stuff people used to put on their webpages as a sign of protest?
Well here's my suggestion, every protester should use a "broken ribbon" logo on their webpage that's pointed to a random nonexistent url e.g. random.nonexistent.site.com.
e.g. img src="http://www.jrytcmtproyncz.com/" height=1 width=1
(Leaving the angle brackets out because Slashdot's engine sucks - it's too stupid to treat plain old text as plain old text.)
You should use a random img url but it doesn't have to change much if at all.
The height and width should be set to 1 so that if some idiot tries to push an offensive image, it doesn't get seen by the person viewing your webpage.
You could in theory construct a broken ribbon logo with an html table of different 1x1 imgs (all different URLs). 16 by 16 pixel icon could be 64 requests to nonexistent domains (drawing the ribbon), and the rest point to single background 1x1 image.
Then if Verisign figures out a cheap way to deal with all the SYN packets heading their direction and still redirect users to a webpage, they'll have solved the "defend against DDOS SYN flood" problem.
Some people say there's no technical solution to this problem.
But add enough people and this might work.
Slashdot and a few other popular sites could do this too.
Pert Peeve (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Pert Peeve (Score:5, Funny)
A great minor evil. That's a new one on me.
Re:Pert Peeve (Score:4, Informative)
The pool (Score:5, Funny)
"Unfair advantage"? (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess people will figure that the end justifies the means, but the argument still seems a little distasteful.
Re:"Unfair advantage"? (Score:2, Informative)
No, I think their complaint is that Verisign is in charge of baking the pies in the first place... it's hard to develop market share for your product, if users are diverted upstream.
Re:"Unfair advantage"? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is clearly abuse of monopoly.
Re:"Unfair advantage"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, put another way, Mountain View would be perfectly satisfied if the result of the lawsuit was that Verisign allowed other cybersquatters to grab mistyped domains for free also, creating a huge happy cybersquatting family. Somehow I don't think the rest of us would be quite as delighted though.
Re:"Unfair advantage"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Unfair advantage"? (Score:5, Interesting)
What normally happens is this:
People do a request for a site, e.g. intranet.internal.foo.org.
The external DNS servers fail in that they don't come back with an answer, and then the client continues through its list of DNS servers until it gets to the internal servers where it gets an answer.
What's happening now is that they ARE getting a good answer from the external servers, and the client is trying to connect to the 64.x.x.x address of Sitesearch. Now in most organisations the client isn't able to connect to that box (because its firewalled or whatever else), so it isn't a problem for VeriSign, however, it is a problem for the organisation, as the clients who are trying to work are getting given IP addresses for internal servers that are incorrect.
I have had to change dial up settings on a few clients and change others over to using static IPs at the moment until a better solution comes around. Or even better till VeriSign stop doing this.
Berny
Re:"Unfair advantage"? (Score:4, Interesting)
They screwed up resellerratings.com (Score:2)
Most ISPs have blocked it (Score:4, Informative)
Please reply to this and list names of fellow anti-VeriSign ISPs if your ISP has blocked this new "feature" as well.
Thanks! I will enjoy analyzing this data.
Re:Most ISPs have blocked it (Score:5, Informative)
If you work in an ISP or other network infrastructure company, you know first-hand the degree of astonishment and rage that Verisign's move elicited; the fallout (spam filtration, security, network monitoring, etc.) goes far beyond HTTP. I don't think any of us slept much that night ... it only took a few hours to restore normal DNS behaviour, the remaining ten or so I spent in shock with my jaw scraping the floor.
I've dealt with Verisign before (try getting decent documentation on the cybercash application library!) and knew they were greedy and stupid, but I wasn't counting on raw, unfettered eeeeeevil.
Re:Most ISPs have blocked it (Score:5, Funny)
Thats part of Verisigns new "Shock and Jaw" Campaign.
Re:Most ISPs have blocked it (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Most ISPs have blocked it (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Most ISPs have blocked it (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Most ISPs have blocked it (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Most ISPs have blocked it (Score:3, Informative)
According to this... (Score:3, Interesting)
Verisign has hired Omniture to collect info on what people misspell. While the website may seem clean and useful, it may not be, depending on what your take on privacy is.
Re:Most ISPs have blocked it (Score:3, Interesting)
and the IEFT now has an Internet-Draft (Score:5, Informative)
So this means.... (Score:2)
We're on the side of the plaintiff?
It's a bad sign if you're cheering this on. Yes, VeriSign is completely wrong here, but the other party isn't to be lauded, either.
It's kinda like Carrot Top fighting Regis Philbin. Although Regis doesn't suddenly appear when I make a wrong turn.
Is it possible Verisign's move will be irrelevant? (Score:5, Interesting)
At the rate things are going, in a couple weeks, no one will be able to get to their search engine site at all, whether they want to or not.
Someone probably deserves recompensation for the hassle, but it's looking like the Internet has proven resilient to even this "high level" attack.
Re:Is it possible Verisign's move will be irreleva (Score:5, Insightful)
At what cost? Routers are working harder, code has been introduced into core servers that has no technical reason to exist, and an IP address, or possibly a sizeable range of IP addresses are now blacklisted worldwide. Those IPs won't be usable for anything anymore, or at least until we see widespread adoption of IPv6. *cough*
What the Internet doesn't need is to become even less of an end-to-end transport, less reliable. And we did it to ourselves.
Re:Is it possible Verisign's move will be irreleva (Score:5, Insightful)
But at the same time, if you take a step back, the rapid mobillization of the response to this is VERY impressive, and the rate at which the Internet is reconfiguring itself to get rid of the trouble is quite amazing.
Remember, three days ago, people were moaning about how this would be a disaster, DNS would be broken, spam filters would be rendered impotent, etc etc.
I'm just saying that, objectively, if you look at this sort of like a body repelling a bacterial attack, the rate at which it's been countered is quite amazing, and shows how well the Internet is fundamentally put together.
Re:Is it possible Verisign's move will be irreleva (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is it possible Verisign's move will be irreleva (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, not really. Just that no A records can reliably point into those blocks now, since the "quick fix" that tons of people used just blocked a few subnets owned by verisign. Of course, verisign has bunches of subnets where they can point this thing, and that quick fix is going to expire
Try this in I.E. (Score:2, Funny)
Cross Site Scripting Bug (Score:4, Informative)
don't u love these spokespeople (Score:4, Funny)
Re:don't u love these spokespeople (Score:3, Funny)
Unless you are a SCO spokesperson, then the story would go a little like this:
another annoying 'feature' of sitefinder (Score:5, Interesting)
Verisign Sucks. They always have and always will.
Re:another annoying 'feature' of sitefinder (Score:3, Interesting)
Agreed. I realized this when I got a phone call two weeks after I registered my first domain asking if I needed their 'services' for hosting. Of course, the sales pitch made it sound like my domain would not work without their services.
I realized this again when I got a letter in the mail telling me to renew a domain b/c it was about to expire. What's the big deal, you say? The domain wasn't registered with them, but they made it sound like if I didn't se
Hello, Pot? This is kettle! (Score:4, Insightful)
Excellent; battle of the twits (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, users of course do not get a 404 when a domain doesn't exist. The domain freakin' doesn't exist, so the DNS lookup itself fails (should get NXDOMAIN) and the browser reports an error in domain resolution.
But this is nice; I want to see all these leeches in the cybersquatting and "World Wide Web" enhancement business pitted against each other.
Don't badmouth Netster too bad (Score:5, Informative)
Timeline:
1997 or so: I registered tylereaves.com, mainly for use in e-mail
2000: I let the domain lapse, not really using it, and tired of paying $40 a year or so for it (Hey, registering was expensive in '97!)
200?: Netster becomes the owner of tylereaves.com
2003: I nicely ask for it back.
2003: I get my domain back. They didn't even charge me the trasnfer fees.
Re:Don't badmouth Netster too bad (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a notice on one of their policy pages that they'll give a domain to anyone with a valid claim (Trademark, etc). I e-mailed the provided address, stating that A: I was the original registrant and B: It's my name. They got back to me in under 24 hours to arrange the transfer.
Someone at Network Solutions responded to me. (Score:5, Interesting)
The drone informed me in a form letter that VeriSign's practices were "well within the guidelines" established by the document Domain Name System Wildcards in Top-Level Domain Zones [verisign.com].
After deconstructing this, we are left with: VeriSign is within the guidelines of the document VeriSign wrote on the matter.
Uhm...
Re:Someone at Network Solutions responded to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
Notice that they only address HTTP and SMTP in the guidelines. I guess there really aren't any other protocols worth speaking of.
(https maybe? Hmm - I wonder what happens there)
Technical defense against hijacked domains (Score:5, Informative)
This is a good time to look at Bob Frankston's dotDNS proposal [circleid.com] for a layer of reliable but meaningless domain names. dotDNS lookups can be made self-verifiable using public-key signatures, but without the costly chain of trust required by DNSSEC methods. The validity of a dotDNS binding can be verified easily by the querier, without relying at all on the server that provided the putative binding.
dotDNS does not solve the whole problem, since any layer that translates from humanly meaningful names to dotDNS names is still vulnerable to hijacking. But the reliable and verifiable name bindings in dotDNS will make it *much* easier to switch name-resolution services when we are dissatisfied with their policies.
dotDNS is a cheap and immediately deployable positive step toward fixing the DNS mess, requiring no approval by any central agency. It's time for a visionary sponsor to step forward and just do it.
I'm not surprised... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'm not surprised... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'm not surprised... (Score:3, Informative)
basically there is a point in the code where the cgi paramater url is assi
Electronic Communication Privacy Act (Score:5, Interesting)
wherein, "intercept" means the aural or other acquisition of the contents of any wire, electronic, or oral communication through the use of any electronic, mechanical, or other device;
The ECPA also provides that "In a civil action under this section, appropriate relief includes--(1) such preliminary and other equitable or declaratory relief as may be appropriate;(2) damages under subsection (c); and (3) a reasonable attorney's fee and other litigation costs reasonably incurred.
Damages.--The court may assess as damages in a civil action under this section the sum of the actual damages suffered by the plaintiff and any profits made by the violator as a result of the violation, but in no case shall a person entitled to recover receive less than the sum of $1,000.
Seems like a good case can be that emails to mistyped addresses are being intercepted by Verisign. Certainly, the emails where not intended to be sent to Verisign, and they appear to be collecting some information from the email (the from address).
When will people learn? (Score:4, Insightful)
Verisign delusional (Score:5, Interesting)
So they are attributing a slashdotting, and a lot of media interest to people being positive about the service. I haven't seen one article, comment or anything that was even remotely positive. What are these guys on?
He also claims they are fully compliant with every RFC. I don't see how this is possible, unless they have found some loophole.
Re:Verisign delusional (Score:3, Insightful)
As far as the RFCs go, maybe the internet architects never thought of this abuse.
I'd have less of a problem (Score:4, Interesting)
www.icarusindi.com
would list
www.icarusindie.com
as a suggested site. But it doesn't. It lists a number of domains that are off quite a few letters more than 1.
If it were at least making an intelligent attempt at getting the user where they wanted to go it could be argued that it is at least useful. Microsoft's search that comes up when you get a DNS error on some domain names is excellent about getting you where you actually wanted to go.
Verisign either gives a half assed attempt at correcting the user or deliberatly ignores domains that aren't registered through them. Despite the fact they get money regardless of who you register through.
Now we just need a credible plaintiff. Preferably a class action suit to maximize damages.
Ben
Right... (Score:5, Funny)
Then when the press questions the astronomers on how their orbital calculations could have been so wrong, the astronomers (being the clever guys they are) will say, "but are calculations were right!" and then erupt in maniacal laughter.
I for one welcome our new...[looks up at the sky]...never mind, I didn't start to say anything. Nope, nothing at all.
Null space needs to remain null (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that ICANN didn't block this move is further evidence than this organization is totally useless and political.
Along the same vein, I disagree with MS's misleading implementation of the IP-not-found error page to redirect users to their proprietary search engine.
The Internet community should rally against any entity that seeks to appropriate undefined address space for their own gain.
If Verisign is allowed to do this, what we're likely to see is each major ISP and browser manufacturer follow suit and hijack undefined space to promote their own systems.
Imagine if you dialed a wrong number on the telephone and you got an advertisement for the phone company. What if local broadcasters bombarded all the unused frequency spectrum with their own promotions.
This has less to do with Verisign than it does to protect the sanctity of null space.
It makes me wonder if someone has a patent on silence yet?
Re:Null space needs to remain null (Score:5, Informative)
No, there's too much prior art, but John Cage has a copyright on 4'33" of it.
KFG
Re:Null space needs to remain null (Score:3, Funny)
Damn, that'd deep.
Note to self (Score:3, Funny)
SCO (need you ask?)
Verisign (screwed by em long before this)
SBC (for not blocking Verisign)
Microsoft (ya just gotta)
RIAA (You don't sue your customers. Solve the problem!)
Sun (for the abomination called Java)
Gray Davis (because he DOES suck)
Cruz Bustamante (Don't give him a CHANCE to suck)
Note to self:
Get more RAM for Notes to self
Funny Stuff (Score:3, Funny)
"We didn't find www.microsoft.com"
"There is no web site at this address."
Only in a perfect world...
sitefinder can't find verisignsucks.com (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't agree (Score:3, Interesting)
Copy of the Lawsuit and More Details (Score:3, Informative)
home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.js
Copy of lawsuit:
search.netster.com/about/lawsuit.asp [netster.com]
Sorry, I forgot to include these links in my submission. Post away!
Cheers,
Doug
Dear VeriSign, Thanks for the spam. (Score:5, Interesting)
Someone a few months ago mentioned to me that Sendmail has a feature where, upon receiving mail, it will check the domain of the sender. If the domain does not exist, it has a forged From: header and is obviously spam.
Thanks to Verisign's efforts to piss me off, every DNS query on a nonexistant
Since this "service" has been implemented, I've gone from 7-8 spams a day to 30-35.
Thanks a lot, assholes.
Re:Dear VeriSign, Thanks for the spam. (Score:4, Funny)
To: abuse@verisign.com
From:
Dear DNS administrators,
The mail server I am administering is experiencing a problem with spam. I have
not getten check_rcpt rule checks in the
now returning an A record, even though they are not registered domains. Please
correct this error in your servers.
Thank you,
Terms of Us (Score:4, Interesting)
2. You may have accessed the VeriSign Service(s) by initiating a query to our DNS resolution service for a nonexistent domain name.
14. By using the service(s) provided by VeriSign under these Terms of Use, you acknowledge that you have read and agree to be bound by all terms and conditions here in and documents incorporated by reference.
I'm not sure how the came up with the fact that I, the end user, made a query to their DNS server. In fact, I did not. My ISP may be using their services, but I personally have no legal relationship with Verisign whatsoever. My ISP may be using their services, but that in no way establishes a relationship between myself and Verisign. IMO, unless you're querying Verisign directly, their terms of use cannot possibly apply -- which means that they apply to almost noone. I would challenge them to show any log that shows my IP address accessing their service. If they can't, then I did not in fact access their service.
And what's worse is the implication that I can bound by "Terms of Use" that I have never seen, based on the assumption that I made the query, when in fact the query mas made to a DNS server at my ISP (and again, I don't really care how my ISP handles that request as long as it sends me the requested info.
Journalists should not write tech stories (Score:5, Funny)
Typically, Internet users are shown a generic "404 -- cannot be found" page when a Web address does not exist.
Sooooo, if the web server can't be found, who's sending the HTTP 404 response (which incidentally means that a file on a server doesn't exist...)?
Why could they accomplish surprise? (Score:3, Interesting)
The backlash against VS should have started BEFORE they went through with this decision -- and that backlash should have been OVERWHELMING, as in, every sysadmin with DNS should have been complaining, ISP's should have been filing motions for restraining orders, and ICANN should have been ready to pull the gTLD contract once and for all.
Alexa (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/movers_shakers
maybe it's time to give DNS back to the public? (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting point... (Score:4, Interesting)
(Try www.a.com, www.b.com, etc
Lies in Verisign's terms of use (Score:5, Interesting)
You may have accessed the VeriSign Service(s) by initiating a query to our DNS resolution service for a nonexistent domain name. We are unable to resolve such queries through the DNS resolution service.
They are, and they do. They resolve such queries to 64.94.110.11.
You need to reject their terms of use! (Score:5, Interesting)
I have informed them that if they cannot stop providing me with this service, (for which I do not accept their terms, and by which I cannot be bound) then they will have to contact me to negotiate a new set of terms to which I do agree.
I would imagine that if every user that is upset by this new 'service' was to do the same then Verisign would have to do 'something' about it.
Official Verisign Response (Score:4, Funny)
Official Verisign Response [verisign.com]
How come noone complains about other TLDs? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey- they stole my domain! (Score:3, Interesting)
how to call Verisign and complain (Score:4, Informative)
+1 703-742-0914 (worldwide)
+1 888-642-9675 (toll free US/Canada)
When you call, select:
* 1 (purchase an product or renew an exist product)
* then 7 (all other questions)
I recommend that you be patient with the Verisign rep that answers the phone. That person may not fully understand the issue / problem, and they are unlikely to personally be responsible for the Verisign decision. Remember that you are objecting what Verisign as a company is doing. Don't yell at the rep. Be polite but firm.
Ask Verisign to stop the wildcarding now. Explain why what they are doing is wrong (such as being unable to determine of a EMail message is being sent from a bogus / non-existent domain because thisdomaindoesnotexist.com resolves to 64.94.110.11).
If you do business with Verisign now, tell them that you will switch vendors unless Verisign stops this practice in X weeks. (fill in the X)
You might want to leave your phone number and request a callback. Anonymous complaints do not go as far.
If you are in the US, you might want to contact your local member of congress and object about what Verisign is doing. Let Verisign know that you are doing this when you call.
Yes, they might flush your complaint down
Re:how to call Verisign and complain (Score:3, Interesting)
I called them just now and basically said the stuff above. I own a few domain names bought from them, and will be transferring them to another provider. When I told them why, they read off a script that told me why their service was so great. Here's their answers and my responses:
"Before, the user would get an unhelpful error message. Now, users always know where to go!"
"That's good on paper, but the problem is that DNS is an inappropriate area to conduct that redirection. Yahoo or Google.com are w
how to complain about Verisign to ICANN (Score:5, Informative)
you can file a complaint about Verisign to ICANN by using their:
Good has come out of this for me. (Score:3, Funny)
Now I can charge my clients for setting up a DNS server on their local networks on any spare crap machine they have lying around, making their networks more resilient to ISP DNS outages and crap like this.
Now I have every excuse I might need to move all my clients name registrations to another registrar ASAP, and all the reason I need to not use VeriSign, or be plagued by their idiot customer service ever again!
Thank you Verisign, for teaching me how to laugh about love...again.
Re:I've never understood (Score:3, Informative)
There's nothing wrong about cybersquatting, but it's Just Not Right(TM).
Re:I've never understood (Score:3, Informative)
Owning a domain you don't use (Score:5, Informative)
But why? There's no real market in domain names any more. Verisign tried to make one. GreatDomains used to have thousands of listings, and you'd see things like "Asked: $25,000. Bid: $20." Now Verisign only has "premium domains" on GreatDomains, ones like "record.com". There are only 66 domains for sale, and few sales.
Re:Owning a domain you don't use (Score:3, Funny)
Aah those were the days. Some idiot for example paid me $1500 for a T0P10.COM domain...probably buyer didn't understand that the second O is a zero.
not quite (Score:3, Informative)
Not quite. Owning a domain is a separate issue from DNS. Owning a domain means you have an entry in a domain registry. It does not mean you have a DNS entry. Owning a domain means you have paid your money and signed up and that you have the right to have your domain added to the DNS.
A lame delegation is something different. A lame delegation is when there are NS records that exist in the DNS, but they point to the address
This isn't cybersquatting. (Score:5, Insightful)
- buying up random names, and hoping someone would buy it from you (aka. domain speculation)
- buying up specific company names, and charging them obnoxious amounts if they want it (which would end up in court, etc)
In this case, Verisign didn't pay for anything-- they're claiming everything that hasn't been bought. Not only that, but if someone had a domain, but didn't have a host in the domain, they're claiming that as theirs, too.[Not that I'm surprised...the first sign that things like this were going to happen was when IE started replacing webserver error messages with their own if they decided your error message wasn't big enough, and replacing 'server not found' with links to their search engine]
So well, your 40 acres comparison falls through as it's more the equivalent of someone saying 'all this is mine until someone else buys it' and then, after you buy your plot, they still claim the area that you haven't built on yet, even though you have the deed to it.
Re:I've never understood (Score:4, Informative)
First, a history lesson. '40 Acres and a Mule' wasn't a pioneer issue. What it is true that during the western rushes, various federal lands were put up for auction or claim by pioneers. The lands were not, however, specified to be 40 acres, but varied in size based on the territory and the specific land grant. For that matter, according to one of my HS Social Studies teachers (a dozen years ago), there were still federal lands for claim in parts of Alaska. That teacher was known to embellish the truth, so I won't put any varacity statement with that.
'40 acres and a mule' were reparations for slaves in the south. They were instituted by a Northern (Union) general, during the aftermath of the civil war, and were later reveresed by an presidential executive order.
So, in short, your parellel falls a little short. If the ICANN were to pass a ruling granting johnny-come-latelies names from vast corporate pools, that would be comprable.
So, what's wrong with cybersquatting: Well, with the federal land grants, if you occupied and developed the federal lands for a specified period of time, they became yours. You could sell or otherwise use them as you wished. Here, cybersqquatters either are taking a developed item (debatably property) and using its good will and value for an interest contrary to the orginal owners. Which would be a violation of the land grants, so thats one point where your analogy fails.
The other type of cybersquatter (who speculates on names or misspellings) is also abusing the good will of the originator, but may be a valid comparison. It is, however, annoying, to get redirected away from what you wanted because of a typo, and from the other side, a squatter who is taking an otherwise useful resource and making it near-useless is neither providing a valid service or generating good will.
Re:Homesteading (Score:5, Insightful)
Cybersquatters do no such thing. There's a difference between registering coffee.com to build a coffee site and registering www.coffee.com to resell it later. Cybersquatters are more akin to ticket scalpers than to homesteaders.
Re:SWAT comes back to mind ... (Score:2)
Dr. Evil quite prominently pronounced his "R"s
Re:what the fuck? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wake up. If you want to find a site, you use Google. If you want to go to a non-existant one, you should damn well be told there's nothing there.
Re:what the fuck? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, thank you Ayn Rand. And how do you give them competition? Ask them to relinquish control of their root servers and institute yours in their place? Or maybe start a whole new internet? Yeah, that's going to work.
Let's face it. Verisign broke the rules (ie: RFCs) which were des
Re:what the fuck? (Score:4, Insightful)
You are missing the whole reason everyone is so upset. Verisign DOESN'T HAVE the rights. They DO NOT OWN the .com or .net
domains. They have entered an agreement
with ICANN where they are the designated
people who ADMINISTER the domains.
They are being financially compensated to
provide a service related to .com and .net;
this does not mean they own them!!
Think about this distinction. If you'd like an analogy, think of mutual funds. Mutual funds are owned by shareholders; however, they pay a fund administrator to manage them. The administrator has the power to make all kinds of changes, but this does NOT mean he owns the mutual fund! If the administrator decided he was going to manipulate the direction of the mutual fund to maximize his own personal income instead of the fund's income, he'd be taken down faster than you can say "Martha Stewart".
Re:what the fuck? (Score:4, Insightful)
The .uk the TLDs are run by Nominet, a not-for-profit organisation that allows anyone to register as a registrar. They manage the .uk namespace but have no commerical interest in it. Given that VeriSign have now demonstrated that they can't be trusted not to take advantage of their position for commerical gain a similar organisation to Nominet should be setup to manage the .com and ..net domains.
Re:Give them a break, they just want more hit (Score:5, Funny)
Re:BIND patch available to block site finder (Score:3, Informative)
The bug is that NS lookups for non-cached domains fails.
nslookup
set type=ns
geek.com
Fails if not already cached by named
nslookup
geek.com
set type=ns
geek.com
Always works