Slashdot Mirror
NSI Accused of Cybersquatting
ckd writes "digitalMASS is reporting that NSI is being sued for cybersquatting by an Alabama resident who claims that they're holding on to expired names long past any reasonable time period (kam.com, listed as expiring in 1996, for example)."
NSI is simultaneously the company that assigns domain names and enforces their assignment, answering to no one and overseen by no one.
But ask yourself, what would be gained by a contrary holding? Is the NSI supposed to take money out of one pocket and put it into another pocket, thereby satisfying the principle of "paying" for a domain name (as distinguished from "squatting")? Make sure you read to the bottom of the article: nothing in NSI's agreement with ICANN precludes this behavior, as long as it isn't extreme enough to qualify as "warehousing", which clearly isn't the case here.
Squatting is bad in principle, but it's a necessary reality of any centralized system of domain-name assignment, which time and experience have shown is the only practical way of accomplishing this necessary service. The only alternative is bigger government and more Federal oversight of the process through the FTC and other administrative bodies, something I have no real fears of, but which lots of the rest of you seem to worry about.
-- Anne Marie
The article says kam.com has expired, fair enough. And is pionting to a redirect, ok.
But, why is kam.com still resolving to an ip that is owned by a "KAM-CIRCUITS"
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: www.kam.com
Address: 194.200.169.2
inetnum: 194.200.169.0 - 194.200.169.255
netname: KAM-CIRCUITS
descr: Kam Circuits Ltd
country: GB
admin-c: UPHM1-RIPE
tech-c: UPHM1-RIPE
status: ASSIGNED PA
mnt-by: AS1849-MNT
changed: ianm@pipex.net 19951031
changed: stephenb@uk.uu.net 19990915
source: RIPE
I haven't looked at all the registrars, but NSI seems to be the worst at dumbing down the process. They change the term 'domain name' to 'web address' and if you want to change your nameserver's host record, the help for that is under 'changing ISPs'. The process of registering domain names does not need to be something everyone can do. There is a slight technical side to it, that it's best if you understand that before registering. Bah.
I'm surprised /. hasn't picked this up yet:
adobe.com whois lookup
Adobe.com was hijacked by somebody in China today! ftp.adobe.com doesn't work, etc.
When NSI announced a policy of holding on to expired domain names and auctioning them a while back, I knew that they were up to something. This news makes it clear that their policy change was just codifying what they'd been doing for a while. The minute they put that policy into effect, I changed my registrar, not wanting to have to ransom my domain back if I accidentally let it expire. People accuse Microsoft of being arrogant, but they pale in comparison to these bloody jackals.
As long as they hold it, ONLY THEY CAN BE THE REGISTRAR for that domain. That means that if someone else wants to register it, they have to pay them. And if the original purchaser wants to register it they have to use them AND they have to pay all "back payments", even though they dropped registration.
This is just one more reason why NSI is pure evil.
The problem with NSI is that they are serving two roles. They run the root DNS servers. This gives them a guaranteed flow of income no matter how much the customers hate them. Their second role is that of a registrar.
Now, they seem to do a pretty good job of running the root name servers. The problem is that this position gives them an advantage over the other registrars. For one, they are guaranteed to have income. No matter how badly they screw up, or how much market share they lose, they will still have money rolling in because all of their competition has to pay them. In addition, as in this case, they can arbitrarily snap up domains without having to actually pay for them. Any other registrar that wanted to play this game would have to fork over cash to NSI to fund it.
What I think ICANN should dictate is this. One or more companies will be given contracts to register domain names, similar to what is done now. A second group of one or more companies will be given contracts to run the root servers. People who register a domain will pay the first group. The first group will pay some fee to the second group for each domain they want served. The contracts for both groups will stipulate that they are not allowed to own, be owned by, partner with, or be the same as any company in the other group.
The abuse that is happening with the current system is out of hand. NSI is acting like a greedy spoiled brat who is causing untold amounts of grief for thousands of hard working admins out there. Unfortunately, with the current system, they can and will keep doing it. In fact, I would expect their behavior to actually get worse as their market share declines. As they lose customers, past behavior indicates that they will abuse their power more to make up for the lost profits.
The results were even faster acting for a friend of mine testing our theory that people lie in waiting for any name based on popularity. He however used NSI's domain name checker directly through their web interface, to find that on the 10-12th look up (usually from varying IPs) the name would be claimed.
This of course lead to our script idea, that would generate random crap, distribute a largish list to various clients, and have them all periodcally pick a random on every few mintues and try http://www.--- on it. This would last a week and a new list would be made. Compiled statistics on how many attempts, when and from where had been made on each domain, and when these domains had been claimed would then be sent back to be reported in some parsed form. The new list would then be worked through. We hoped that this would eventually discourage people squatting on this basis, due to cost.
Now I realize that cost may not be a factor for someone like NSI, and I realize that random crap may have to be generated from dictionaries and rules. We were further hoping that through a movie name generator (add the or a small set of adjectives to any noun) would cause enough companies to loose their prefered sites, that there'd be some public out cry.
We didn't ever implement this thoguh. We get paid for other work.
I don't think that billing cycle could possibly be as long as the four months it's been since the domain expired. And "day to day" checking has become tiresome. This Alabama resident is right on - I hadn't thought of it in terms of cybersquatting, but now that he mentions it, that's the obvious conclusion. It's not fair to the other registrars or to the people who want to buy some of the dead domain names of Network Solutions is allowed to keep the domains for an extended period of time. I hope the suit will open the eyes of more people so they can see NSI's evil business practices.
ugggh... my post kinda got garbled there. Let me repost that, for your viewing pleasure:
Perhaps THIS
Seriously, reposting stories that were posted a year ago is one thing, but COME ON! This was posted like 3 days ago!
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
For the non-lawyers (include me in that category), self-dealing is an interesting concept in the law. Here's the definition from Black's Law Dictionary: Relates to transactions wherein a trustee, acting for himself and also as "trustee," a relation which demands strict fidelity to others, seeks to consummate a deal wherein self-interest is opposed to duty.
I tried to register a domain one night early last year. Near the end of the process, my browser crashed. It was late, so I decided to go home and finish the job in the morning. Guess what! By the time I got back, the domain had been registered by somebody else, and a few minutes of research turned up that they were an NSI employee! Argh.
Anyone else heard of such nonsense from or favorite registrar?
If you don't have anything nice to say, say it often.
- Ed the Sock
I am so happy to see this
I hope to see a lot more -- I'm generally against a lot of lawsuits but I really have no choice but to feel utter dispise towards that company.
My recent dealings with them have been absolutely horrendous, here is a page about it.
Not only have I had horrible experience with their customer service department, but also they're utilities for updating and registering are so far behind the rest of the competitors I can't imagine why anyone still does business with them.
The biggest thing I dont understand about them, is that since they lost their monopoly they now only account for 40% instead of 100%? A 60% loss in market share and they still seemingly refuse to restructure their obviously defunct customer service department and registration tools?
This, above all, deserves to be a Fucked Company life member.
My worst experience with them, was getting my contact record changed when the email address expired very suddenly. After explaining to them the situation and getting a canned response back then responding to that, then getting another canned response back I finally figured out what to do. You have to FAX them something. Wow, I thought we were living in a digital age, hell no. So I faxed it, nope - they lost it twice! Finally, I get my contact record changed (after 2.5 months of arguing with them) and when I tried to update my domain (nerdfar.org) they are refusing on the grounds that I have not properly proved my identity - yet my contact record is updated.
If there is a law against this I'd love to nail em for it -- not for any money, I just want my domain to be functional again.
Well, this is one hell of a rant.
Morale of the story, screw NSI and use register.com or another one of the registrars because NSI's head is so far up it's ass it's making the slashdot trolls envious.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
NSI's head is so far up it's ass it's making the slashdot trolls envious.
Trolls have feelings, too.