Slashdot Mirror

CWmike writes "A week after Web hosting company Network Solutions dealt with a large-scale infection of WordPress-driven blogs, the company acknowledged that other sites it hosts have been compromised. 'We have received reports that Network Solutions customers are seeing malicious code added to their websites and we are really sorry for this experience,' said spokesman Shashi Bellamkonda in a blog post. 'At this time, since anything we say in public may help the perpetrators, we are unable to provide details.' Securi Security Labs said on Sunday that at least 50 sites hosted by Networks Solutions had been hacked, and that malicious JavaScript injected into those sites was redirecting unsuspecting users to a Ukrainian attack server. The same server was involved in the earlier attacks against Network Solutions-hosted blogs. According to the StopMalvertising blog, the attacks planted a rogue IFRAME on the hacked sites to shunt users to the attack server. That server then launches multiple exploits, including an attack kit of ActiveX exploits and three more leveraging Adobe Reader vulnerabilities, against visiting PCs. Several browsers, including IE8, Chrome and Firefox, display warnings when users are redirected to the attack site."

netizen writes "CircleID is reporting a large-scale DDoS attack affecting all of Network Solutions' name servers for the past 48 hours, potentially affecting millions of websites and emails around the world hosting their domain names on the company's servers. The NANOG mailing list indicates that it is due to a very large-scale UDP/53 DDoS which Network Solutions has also confirmed: 'There is a spike in DNS query volumes that is causing latency for the delay in web sites resolving. This is a result of a DDOS attack. We are taking measures to mitigate the attack and speed up queries.""

rockwood reports that the .tel top level domain has been deployed, "in a first attempt at pushing the recently approved .tel... The top-level domain .tel was approved by ICANN as a sponsored TLD launching on Wednesday, December 3, 2008 to trademark owners of national effect and on February 3, 2009 to anyone who wishes to apply. Its main purpose is as a single management and publishing point for 'internet communication' services, providing a global contacts directory service by housing all types of contact information directly in the DNS."

baileyjs asks: "I help run a small web development firm, and we are always trying to save money, but not at the cost of service to our customers. We currently purchase DNS services from our ISP, but are looking at getting our own rack. I was going to put some DNS servers there when I saw that Network Solutions offers free DNS. All our of domains (about 150) are currently on Network Solutions, so transfer is not an issue. Why shouldn't I use Network Solutions? Why should I build my own? What reasons, besides 'Network Solutions is Evil', can I give my boss?"

Ryosen writes "I received an email this morning from Network Solutions. Seems they are offering their current customers the ability to renew their domain names for 100 years. Is this is a realistic investment considering most companies don't last 100 years? Given that the Internet is a recent phenomenom, is it realistic to expect it to be the same in 100 years? Will Verisign be around that long? Does this make sense?"

hip2b2 asks: "SSL over HTTP is becoming a very popular way of securing websites for eCommerce and other forms of secure transactions. A vital ingredient of a SSL protected website is an SSL certificate. In the Philippines, most of the secure website here buy their certificates from Verisign. Why should we trust a certification authority that is located in a different country and charges and arm and a leg for a certificate instead of a local one? I can pay 349USD for a Verisign or 125USD for one from Thawte, which is not cheap here. With an exchange rate of around 48.50PHP per USD, this amount is beyond the reach of most local sites who just want to setup secure sites to try out the technology or use it for some charitable purpose. How do we expect to promote the use of SSL in our websites locally with these prohibitive costs? This problem is not limited to the Philippines, I presume that other countries could also relate to this issue." Right now, the cost of an SSL certificate is one of the prices for doing business on the internet (in addition to bandwitdh costs), but what would it take to start up another company that issues CAs, especially if you want to do it outside of the US?

"Is it a question of trust? Do local ecommerce and secure sites trust verisign more that say a local company that provides secure certificates? What confuses me is why is there no proliferation of trusted local institutional CAs? In the future, Verisign might end up being another Network Solutions.

Oh wait! Network Solutions is a Verisign company!

What are the barriers for setting up local country CAs? Right now, I presume that browser makers are the ones listing the trusted root CAs on their browsers by default. If my university were to setup a root CA how would we get netscape and the other browser makers to recognize us? or is there some sort of governing body for assigning root CAs like ICANN is supposed to be for name resolution? or could this be one of ICANN's eventual functions?"

tregoweth asks: "Today I received a spam that began, 'Register your domain name as a .ST domain too! Just go to: http://www.nic.st.' Normally I use SpamCop to find who to complain to, but...what do you do when a registrar (including NSI) is spamming you? Especially one that's violating its own rules against spamming?"

Here are the headers from tregoweth's SPAM message for those of you interested. It might be a good time to update those procmail filters:

Return-Path: <info@domain4u.st>
Received: from mate.pobox.com ([208.210.124.44])
by osgood.mail.mindspring.net (Mindspring Mail Service) with
ESMTP id t5i9v5.ukv.30ahi43
for <jyx@mindspring.com>; Sun, 7 Jan 2001 21:37:23 -0500 (EST)
Received: from mate.pobox.com (localhost [127.0.0.1])
by mate.pobox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 595687A192
for <jyx@mindspring.com>; Sun, 7 Jan 2001 21:37:23 -0500 (EST)
Received: from fep01-svc.swip.net (fep01.swip.net [130.244.199.129])
by mate.pobox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP
id 5A4AA7A1A3; Sun, 7 Jan 2001 21:37:22 -0500 (EST)
Received: from domain4u.st ([193.15.116.252]) by fep01-svc.swip.net
(InterMail vM.5.01.01.01 201-252-104) with SMTP
id <20010108023721.MDRP5361.fep01-svc.swip.net@domain4u.st>;
Mon, 8 Jan 2001 03:37:21 +0100
From: info@domain4u.st
Reply-To: info@domain4u.st
To: info@domain4u.st
Subject: Lock in your domain name now!
Message-Id: <20010108023721.MDRP5361.fep01-svc.swip.net@domain4u.st>
Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2001 03:37:21 +0100

For the record, www.domain4u.st and www.nic.st, the official registrar for Sao Tome, share the same IP address. Something smells fishy here. Is there anything that can be done about it?

toolz asks: "Can anyone here tell me how one can register a .EDU domain for a legitimate school? I have searched Network Solution's site, and came up with zero refs. Ditto for all of the other registrars. Has .EDU gone underground or what? Would be grateful for a heads-up on this."

IRNI writes "TechTV News has an article about hoarded domain names. A man is bringing a class action lawsuit against Network Solutions claiming that they will not release leagally expired domain names. I know this to be true. One of my domains expired on the 6th and is still not available for the public to use." As far as I know, Network Solutions hasn't released any domain names that have expired in the last six months or more.

There's a boatload of censorware news today, enough for two or three Slashdot stories -- but to conserve electrons, we're bringing it to you all in one easy-to-download package. First, Peacefire has a report on the accuracy of intelligent skin-tone-scanning software, one month after its company said they'd have it working in a month. And since the CEO of ClickSafe spoke at the COPA Commission meeting yesterday, Peacefire ran a check to see how many COPA-related sites its AI blocks. Finally, Waldo Jaquith has a report from the meeting itself which should be sobering but cracked me up anyway. Pay attention, everyone, these are the folks who are going to censor your Internet.

The Child Online Protection Act, passed late last year and then struck down early this year, is still under appeal. Colloquially it's known as "CDAII." Part of what the Act does is establish a Commission that meets every so often -- the Commission's website has details on its mandate and so on.

(Update, a few minutes later: make that "injunctified," or whatever one says for a law against which an injunction has been applied, instead of "struck down." Sorry; IANAL.)

Speaking at the Commission meeting yesterday and today were the CEOs of several major censorware companies. Among them was Michael Stephani, whose company Exotrope makes a product called BAIR.

BAIR

BAIR checks images as they download onto your computer, and claims to be able to tell the difference between pornography and other types of images. The "AI" in its acronym stands for artificial intelligence, running on supercomputers.

When the Wired story on BAIR came out last month (a story "borrowed" from Peacefire -- I'm not going to get into it), Wired quoted the company as saying "they plan to fix the errors within the next month." What errors?

"BAIR incorrectly blocked photographs of Yellowstone, the Baltimore waterfront, Snoopy, boats, sunsets, dogs, vegetables and even a Wired News staff meeting.

"It rated as acceptable for minors -- even on the most restrictive setting -- explicit images of oral sex, anal sex, group sex, masturbation, and ejaculation."

That was one month ago. How's BAIR doing now?

Peacefire retested the same 50 pornographic images that they'd used last month (which presumably BAIR's programmers would have paid extra-special attention to). Their new report finds that, instead of zero, the number of blocked images is now: 34. I've got a great slogan for them: "now your children can only see 32% of the web's oral sex, anal sex, group sex, masturbation, and ejaculation."

One's respect for these programmers is dampened a little, though, because there's more to Peacefire's report. It seems, in a random sample of 50 photos of people's faces, BAIR blocked ... how many? ... 34.

Maybe that slogan should be: "now your children can only see 32% of the web," period.

It's wonderful to live in a world where artificial intelligence offers limitless possibilities. Its website suggests that "Because Artificial Intelligence can be taught to recognize a variety of patterns," -- oh, OK -- "our BAIR can be taught to evaluate other categories such as violence or illegal activities. The BAIR is currently undergoing training in these areas to provide additional filtration selections."

ClickSafe

Richard Schwartz, CEO of ClickSafe, also spoke yesterday at the COPA Commission meeting. Just for kicks, Peacefire decided to try out their spiffy AI software too.

Insert marketblurb here: "...by combining cutting-edge graphic, word and phrase-recognition technology, ClickSafe has achieved accuracy rates of over 99% (according to recent sample tests). ClickSafe can precisely distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate sites (e.g. sites related to issues such as breast cancer will not be blocked)."

What Peacefire did was test this software against the website of the COPA Commission itself, and related sites such as those of speakers or Commission members. They found that blocked pages included:

• The Child Online Protection Act itself, in original and amended form;
• The COPA Commission FAQ;
• Biographies of Commission members Stephen Balkam and John Bastian;
• Bio of Commission member and famed anti-porn crusader Donna Rice Hughes, as well as AppendixA from her book Kids Online: Protecting Your Children in Cyberspace;
• A list of technologies the Commission examines;
• The scope of what the Commission is called upon to do;
• A service agreement from a little company called Network Solutions, whose rep chairs COPA's meetings;
• "About the ICRA" (the makers of RSACi, "a simple, yet effective rating system for web sites which both protected children and protected the rights of free speech");
• Bible study tools: "We hope these free resources foster a desire for Christians to learn more about the Bible, deepening their relationship with God" unless they're using censorware;
• The American Family Association (a conservative Christian group that is trying to force censorware into public libraries, including those surrounding the Slashdot Geek Compound);
• The ACLU, the EFF, and the Center for Democracy and Technology;

and so on.

When I spoke with Bennett about this, he commented that the strange thing was that these flaws are so easy to find; you'd think someone would have run these simple tests already. If anyone reading wants to get their name in Slashdot (and other news media too), censorware is a gold mine of untested misinformation. Buy a product, design a solid unbiased test for it, run the test, and send us what you find. Repeat until the whole world has a clue.

The COPA Commission Meeting

The following is an account of yesterday's COPA Commission meeting, by Waldo Jaquith. Keep in mind that this meeting's purpose, according to the Scope & Timeline Proposal which is blocked by ClickSafe, is to study filtering and blocking software to learn what to recommend in its report to Congress late this year.

Folks,

For more information on the COPA Commission, see http://www.copacommission.org/. (Unless your network has ClickSafe installed, in which case you shouldn't bother.) There is an agenda for this meeting, and there are bios for most people, as well as the prepared speeches for many of the below folks. I've tried to be objective.

Oh, screw that. There's nothing objective about it. But I've tried to give useful facts, quote accurately, etc.

The whole affair, which was scheduled to start at 9:30am, didn't actually start until 10:15am. Which was good, because I didn't get there until 9:45. Although the event was being held at the University of Richmond's Jepson Alumni Center, the room felt like your basic hotel meeting room. Bad carpet, ugly chairs, poor lighting. There were enough chairs to seat about 100 people, but only 35 people were in attendance. Directly in front of the two columns of chairs was a table with chairs, facing away from the audience. This table was for people asked to testify before the COPA Commission. On the other side of that table was a long table, at which was seated the commission, all sixteen members. The result was that the people testifying, who did most of the talking, could only be recognized by the backs of their heads by the audience.

Chairman Donald Telage called the meeting to order and introduced the first panel, who was to speak for approximately 45 minutes on the topic of client-side filters. This panel included Gordon Ross, the President and CEO of Net Nanny, Mark Smith, the President of BrowseSafe, Susan Getgood, the VP and General Manager of Cyber Patrol, and Richard Schwartz, the CEO of Opportunity-America (ClickSafe.com).

Gordon Ross kicked things off with a tremendously boring ten minute speech about how client-side filters work. The only interesting comment that he made was his belief that "consumers should have the ability to analyze each and every site in the database..." [...because his product Net Nanny is the only one of the 150 censorware packages on the market that allows oversight of its blacklist. -ed] He also kicked off the First Amendment references, which nearly every speaker throughout the day would spend some time talking about, but not really saying very much.

Mark Smith from BrowseSafe occupied the next few minutes, giving a rambling speech in which he discussed censorware as if it were some far-off and idyllic concept.

"Most products focus on either client-side- or server-side-based technology. What would happen if the benefits of each could be brought together to provide the user with a new, more flexible and powerful way of surfing the web? What if every sub domain of every site had been categorized and classified by its content? Wouldn't you agree that everyone could benefit from that combination of technology? Of course you would? Now let's walk across the street to the front porch of the family of the home and try to view it from the parent's perspective. What if parents were able to determine what the child sees? What would it be like if e-mail, instant messaging, chat and other computer tools could be also controlled?"

Then, although the topic was client-side filters, he rambled on for several minutes about PlanetGood, a website that was probably unfamiliar to many in the room. He used the site's name in every single sentence for several minutes. And, naturally, he closed talking about "our forefathers" and "these inalienable rights that our forefathers entrusted to us and many of them died for."

Susan Getgood from Cyber Patrol kept things short and sweet, and took the "I'm a new mother and want to protect my children" approach. She muddled the definition of censorship somewhat, saying that "[s]ome critics confuse censorship, which is imposed by the government, with technology that a family or school can choose to use and then set to implement an individual policy." Our school system isn't a part of the government?

Richard Schwartz of ClickSafe.com touted his product nearly as much as Mark Smith promoted the mysterious "PlanetGood." He also described a system that his company has developed that sounds very much like Exotrope's BAIR. "Fleshtone has a very unique set of features [...] Through a combination?of a set of sophisticated algorithms it can establish if something is pornographic. [...] Justice Potter Stewart lives within our system, because he knows it when he sees it. It works, it's been tested out, it's over 99% effective." "We can distinguish between chicken breast and sexy breast." "A consortium of Portuguese and Australian pornographers had been hijacking people off of different sites, including the Harvard Law Review site into their pornographic sites. And then you have to reboot your computer in order to get out."

After the four had testified, we moved into the commission Q&A session. (No questions would be allowed from the audience.) A few interesting questions, answers, and comments cropped up during this portion.

Richard Schwartz, only half kidding, proposed a tax on Internet pornography.

Commissioner Gregory L. Rohde asked Richard Schwartz if his image filter could tell the difference between art and pornography. Astoundingly, Schwartz replied that it could.

Commissioner Jerry Berman asked if there were any plans to create an organization that could provide objective reviews of censorware products to help parents decide what to buy. Gordon Ross said that this had been tried a few years back with SIFT (?), and that it didn't work out.

After a short break, we began the second panel, which addressed server side filtering. Testifying was Kevin Fink, N2H2's CTO; Sunil Paul, Chairman of Brightmail; Stephen Boyles of Library Guardian (Swifteye); Michael Stephani, President and CEO of Exotrope; Ginny Wydler, Director of Standards and Policy at AOL; and Tim Robertson, CEO of FamilyClick.

The first person to say anything interesting was Michael Stephani, who made some fairly interesting claims. He said that their blacklist of sites included four million sites, and that their image-recognition software, BAIR, is 99.8% percent effective. Stephani bragged that it blocked 1 out of 6 general images and 96 out of 100 pornographic images. He pointed out (perhaps rightly) that image filtering is the only real way to filter out pornography, and also that client-side filtering would so go the way of the dodo, given the proliferation of Internet appliances. It wasn't long before he got all 'God bless America' and 'think of the children,' and eyeballs could be heard rolling throughout the room.

As Commissioners asked questions of the panel, Chairman Donald Telage admitted that he wasn't aware that client-side filters were able to use a blacklist. He was under the impression that they could only filter. I had flashbacks from the Napster hearings last week ("Can't you track their intellectual property address?")

Out of the blue, Karen Talbert asked the panel for a show of hands regarding their respective products' ability to work with high-speed connections. Obviously, everybody's hands went up.

How do these people get on the commission?

When given half a chance, Stephani got all "think of the children, my god, won't somebody think of the children?" again. He also bragged that Exotrope has a new, not-yet-released product that filters IM [AOL Instant Messaging -ed.] and even detects innuendo. Stephani said that they just got a contract to install this program on 30,000 school servers. Continuing his spectacular Old Faithful of shit, he cheerfully envisioned a time in the future when there would be "photonic switches" that would maintain a complete blueprint of everything that every user had ever done on-line. Christ, that's frightening. Stephani said that they'd spent $6.5MUS developing BAIR, and went on to point out the coincidence that Peacefire released the report showing that BAIR was 0% effective on the same day that their servers went down. Perhaps he was implying that Peacefire members hacked the server, perhaps that we were taking advantage of them, or perhaps he was just laughing at the circumstances.

There was no promised audience Q&A. That's probably because the whole event ran well over when it was supposed to end. Lacking a better approach, I rushed up to the ebullient Stephani with a copy of the newest BAIR report in hand. Although he was already talking to a reporter, he stopped when he saw my nametag ("Waldo L. Jaquith, Peacefire") and looked a little surprised. He, as well as his sidekick PR guy, enthusiastically introduced themselves. We talked for a few minutes, during which time I said that BAIR appears to suck less than many other censorware programs. But I was still fundamentally opposed to all of them. Between this and the revised report, Stephani was my new best friend. Several other people came forward to read nametags and shake hands, but I continued to talk to Stephani and the reporter, Drew Clark from Technology Daily.

Ten minutes later, when I walked out, I felt a little baffled. Stephani behaved towards me as if Peacefire had just given him the most glowing review that BAIR had ever gotten. This, despite my repeatedly pointing out that Peacefire is fundamentally opposed to filters, always will be, and BAIR is simply rather effective at performing the task that we hate.

I was disappointed that a few major points were never brought up during the discussions:

• Server-side censorware (especially that which is housed with each website) will always be a severe privacy violation, because it needs data on the user in order to establish what information to provide.
• Client-side censorware is doomed to fail because children know more about computers than their parents. The parent has to trust that little Suzy won't uninstall Cyber Patrol. But if Suzy can be trusted, why bother with Cyber Patrol?
• Internet censorship is impossible. The Internet is so large that it's a waste of time, so let's all stop. Gated community models, like AOL, Compuserve and such, are a far better way to provide a "safe" experience for kids.
• The concerns about children's wellbeing presented during the meeting mirror those that parents, since the beginning of time, have always had for their children. How can I keep my child safe when I'm not watching him? How do I know what my child is doing if I'm not around? How do I keep my children from hearing / seeing / saying bad things? Censorware makes no more sense than installing a v-chip in little Suzy's head. Get over it.

In a nutshell, I'm not sure what, if anything, was established at this meeting. It's clear that most of the Commissioners knew every little to start off with, and their opinions are being formed on what amounts to a series of sales pitch sprinkled with god-and-country references, a la mega blowout carpet sales around Independence Day. I'm glad COPA was struck down. Let's get on with our lives.

Best,
Waldo

jathos asks: "It looks like Network Solutions is now refusing to release 'expired' domains back into the public domain. I've personally seen domains that have been expired for more than a month, yet NSI still insists that they are 'taken.' E-mail messages sent to NSI's tech support has incurred legalese responses basically telling me that I have no right to inquire about someone else's domain. Isn't it NSI's responsibility to release these names back into the public domain? Isn't it a violation of their charter if they do not? Furthermore, could they be holding back these domain names because they want to keep revenue from the other registrars (addition by subtraction)? See this message thread for more opinions." Expired domains really should be removed from the databases of registrars upon expiration. NSI does no one a service (except, themselves of course) by holding on to them. Since they now claim to 'own' all of the domains that are registered with them, what can one do?

A good example of why expired domains should be allowed back into the pool comes in the form of another question from Jonathan Mendelson: "I was recently searching to see if mendelson.net was available, and it surprised me to see that Network Solutions was holding it. I used the whois function to find out more, and I saw that their record expired on Nov. 14, 1999. This makes it appear that they are holding the domain illegally. Are they allowed to do this, and if not, is there any action that I can take to prevent them doing so? Is there any particular reason that they might be holding it, and might there be other domains with which they are doing the same?"

Of course, an answer (in the form of another question, obviously) might be found in this bit from conf00sledBynsi who asks:

"There is a domain name I am interested in, which is not being used. It was originally registered in March of 1988, and has not been reregistered, so it has 'lapsed' for over three months, but Network Solutions has not released it for re-registration yet. After a couple of emails to Network Solutions, I received the following reply:

---------------------

Thank you for contacting Network Solutions.

The expiration date that shows in WHOIS is not the date that a domain name becomes available to be registered by another party.

The expiration date appears in the WHOIS database so that the registrant may be able to verify how long they have locked in there domain name registration.

The registrant still has until the end of the billing cycle before the domain name is deleted, and released to be registered by the public.

We do not release the date a domain name will be deleted from our database to third parties. Please continue to check the availability of the domain name on a day to day basis. As long as it is registered our system will not allow you to register the name. Once it is deleted, the name is able to be registered on a first come first serve basis.

There are no waiting list for domain name registrations.

--------------------------

Does anybody know how long their 'billing cycle' is, or what their algorithm is for determining when to release a domain name? For that matter, has anybody figured out their algorithm for when, exactly, during a particular day the database is updated?"

Could it be, that by arbitrarily defining their "billing cycle" NSI is able to hold on to domains that have been expired for years. I would think that your normal business cycle is measured in months so this seems rather fishy to me. Might NSI be squatting on their own domains?

jvj24601 writes "A columnist at news.com reports that Network Solutions has recently changed its contracts -- it now 'owns' the domain name and can take it back at will. This has been held up in court. I am especially appalled that their agreement states 'NSI may terminate "domain name registration services" if the registrant uses them for "any improper purpose, as determined in our sole discretion."'" Time to check the DomainNameBuyersGuide again ...

Frac writes " Think Michael Robertson, CEO of mp3.com, is a pioneer of mp3s and nothing else? Think again. Apparently he is a domain squatter of various registered trademarks that don't belong to him, according to Wired News. A search on network solution's whois reveals that he has a large collection of domains under his belt, a lot of which are names of products that he doesn't own. They are registered under his name, and Filez and mp3.com, his companies. Domain names include tu-cows.com, audiograbber.com, talk-city.com, and metacrawler.net. "

Frac writes " Think Michael Robertson, CEO of mp3.com, is a pioneer of mp3s and nothing else? Think again. Apparently he is a domain squatter of various registered trademarks that don't belong to him, according to Wired News. A search on network solution's whois reveals that he has a large collection of domains under his belt, a lot of which are names of products that he doesn't own. They are registered under his name, and Filez and mp3.com, his companies. Domain names include tu-cows.com, audiograbber.com, talk-city.com, and metacrawler.net. "

Frac writes " Think Michael Robertson, CEO of mp3.com, is a pioneer of mp3s and nothing else? Think again. Apparently he is a domain squatter of various registered trademarks that don't belong to him, according to Wired News. A search on network solution's whois reveals that he has a large collection of domains under his belt, a lot of which are names of products that he doesn't own. They are registered under his name, and Filez and mp3.com, his companies. Domain names include tu-cows.com, audiograbber.com, talk-city.com, and metacrawler.net. "

Frac writes " Think Michael Robertson, CEO of mp3.com, is a pioneer of mp3s and nothing else? Think again. Apparently he is a domain squatter of various registered trademarks that don't belong to him, according to Wired News. A search on network solution's whois reveals that he has a large collection of domains under his belt, a lot of which are names of products that he doesn't own. They are registered under his name, and Filez and mp3.com, his companies. Domain names include tu-cows.com, audiograbber.com, talk-city.com, and metacrawler.net. "

Frac writes " Think Michael Robertson, CEO of mp3.com, is a pioneer of mp3s and nothing else? Think again. Apparently he is a domain squatter of various registered trademarks that don't belong to him, according to Wired News. A search on network solution's whois reveals that he has a large collection of domains under his belt, a lot of which are names of products that he doesn't own. They are registered under his name, and Filez and mp3.com, his companies. Domain names include tu-cows.com, audiograbber.com, talk-city.com, and metacrawler.net. "

Frac writes " Think Michael Robertson, CEO of mp3.com, is a pioneer of mp3s and nothing else? Think again. Apparently he is a domain squatter of various registered trademarks that don't belong to him, according to Wired News. A search on network solution's whois reveals that he has a large collection of domains under his belt, a lot of which are names of products that he doesn't own. They are registered under his name, and Filez and mp3.com, his companies. Domain names include tu-cows.com, audiograbber.com, talk-city.com, and metacrawler.net. "

Frac writes " Think Michael Robertson, CEO of mp3.com, is a pioneer of mp3s and nothing else? Think again. Apparently he is a domain squatter of various registered trademarks that don't belong to him, according to Wired News. A search on network solution's whois reveals that he has a large collection of domains under his belt, a lot of which are names of products that he doesn't own. They are registered under his name, and Filez and mp3.com, his companies. Domain names include tu-cows.com, audiograbber.com, talk-city.com, and metacrawler.net. "

Frac writes " Think Michael Robertson, CEO of mp3.com, is a pioneer of mp3s and nothing else? Think again. Apparently he is a domain squatter of various registered trademarks that don't belong to him, according to Wired News. A search on network solution's whois reveals that he has a large collection of domains under his belt, a lot of which are names of products that he doesn't own. They are registered under his name, and Filez and mp3.com, his companies. Domain names include tu-cows.com, audiograbber.com, talk-city.com, and metacrawler.net. "

thor writes, "According to CNBC, Verisign (VRSN) will purchase Network Solutions (NSOL) for approx. $21B ($531/share). Looks like the story of the day for a lot of people on and off of Wall Street. Network Solutions closed at $360 5/8 yesterday is trading up $100 in early hours trading. " I've also found the story on CNNfn. Why does this merger scare me?

worth writes "Network Solutions, Inc. has launched a new site to help resolve domain disputes online. They call it the online center for Domain Name Dispute Assistance." sounds like a very good, much-needed service. If it works.

An AC sent in this Village Voice story - "In a highly unusual move last week, FBI agents called mike zieper, an independent artist who goes by the name Mike Z., and "requested" that he remove his site from the Internet. When he declined, the FBI worked in tandem with the U.S. Attorney's office to persuade his Web host and its server to pull Zieper's site--18 days after it went up--without having a subpoena or court order of any kind." The site was apparently crowdedtheater.com. What annoyed the FBI? Apparently the site had a video about rioting on New Year's Eve. Will the FBI shut down every site mentioning disruption on 2000-01-01?

Update: 11/24 08:11 by michael : One of our alert /. readers apparently saw and saved the video while the site was up, and has put up a mirror.

mike_markley writes " CNN has an article that talks about a suit that Lockheed Martin filed against NSI over a domain that allegedly infringed upon Lockheed's copyrights. The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals decided that NSI wasn't responsible for trademark infringements such as this. " Good - the Court's basis was recognizing the need for registrants to move with speed, unlike the trademark office.

EraseMe writes "Sucks. A quick whois shows that a whole slew of offensive domain names are owned by the Central District of California US District Court. Is this an attempt at using our tax dollars towards lucrative purchases, or simply a censorship of our global freedom?" The second, but not in the way that you think. The court holds the domains because there's an ongoing suit which is challenging Network Solutions' refusal to register domains based on the Pacifica "seven dirty words" case. It was covered a few months ago in various news outlets.

Even more interesting is NSI's practice of refusing registrations to some registrants but granting them to others. Various registrants tried to register "nigger.com", and were refused, before NSI permitted the NAACP to register it (although why the NAACP wants to be associated with nigger.com is hard for me to grasp). Why do some organizations get special treatment for registering domain names?

Zigg asks: "With the story on NSI's webmail "service" and the rant I posted therein, I got a little more information with regards to alternative registrars that have apparently been around a few months now, thanks to ICANN. I was hoping that Slashdot readers could contribute stories of their experiences with some of these guys, to see if any of them really are better than NSI or are just worth checking out because they're not NSI?"

drwiii writes "Our good friends at NSI have modified their WHOIS agreement yet again, and it now seems to forbid any repackaging of the results returned from the query, even if your interest is not commercial. Also, notice how the agreement now appears before any results are returned. " I noticed it says "significant portion", but it also never really defines it, either...

Jonas Öberg writes "It appears as if Network Solutions fairly recently put in a clause at the end of all whois requests, telling you that you're not allowed to reproduce, sell, transfer or modify the information. See whois slashdot.org for an example. " I've seen this before-can anyone tell us when this first started?

Jeff Knox writes "The internic has apparently redesigned it webpage. All request to internic.net are not automatically forwarded to www.networksolutions.com. That means there no longer is the cgi-bin/whois? request, etc.. Everything is now on their blatant self promoting fancy gui website. " Anyone use the new stuff? Better? Worse? Intersting way to protect their business after they lose their monopoly status. But "The Dot Com People"? What terrible slogan. Can we be "The Dot Dot People"?