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VeriSign Sued Over SiteFinder Service
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."
What's wrong with cybersquatting? How is it different from the pioneers getting 40 acres and a mule?
VeriSign be a bunch of land-lubbin' butt pirates, mateys!
Anti-trust was one of the very few tactics I didn't hear discussed as possible ways to stop Verisign.
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.
--
Use Vobbo for Video Blogs
just a few minutes ago i was reading a forum and someine directed me to " http://www.ananitech.com/ "
i loaded it up, and it eventually brought up the new site finder, and said "did you mean" and gave me a list (with google spell checking accuracy) of sites that it could have been. sure enough, it linked me to anandtech.com, which is what the person was refering to.
and the writer or this article states that"the lawsuit is most likely a good thing, as it provides one more avenue to pursue in getting VeriSign to terminate SiteFinder"
What the fuck are you talking about?
would you rather be refered to a list of similar sites who might be the one you meant, or fucking nester.com ???
what the fuck is wrong with you?
one hundred meeeellion dollahs!
Cybersquatting, though one of the great minor evils of the web, is damned hard to stop. I can't think of any way to regulate/legislate it without messing up the domain registration and transfer process for everyone else - though it would be nice to be able to buy domains BACK from these companies - I would imagine quie a few choice domains are in their hands. Nice to see a lawsuit taking on Verisign over this - even if it is a cybersquatter. I wonder if there's an intelligent way to reserve domain names for individuals and organizations which already have use for the name - maybe a form of 'prior branding' only better implemented...
OK guys, who had 3-5 days??
I guess people will figure that the end justifies the means, but the argument still seems a little distasteful.
The bold print giveth, and the fine print taketh away
Even though the site is perfectly fine, I CAN'T access it without hitting their stupid "finder" for some reason.
*Confirmed*: Adelphia has blocked VeriSign's new "service."
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.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
has been turned over in many legal battles, such as in cases where celebrities or companies sue to get to get their name from the cybersquatter party. I suspect VeriSign will be forced to terminate the feature.
A blog like any other.
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.
Feh.
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.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
http://www.";alert("fuckverisign");".com
Check out http://dropline.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1472 If you use Slackware, don't like verisign's sitefinder, and run DNS.
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam
Interested in AI? MACR
- 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.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
My browsers - Firebird and IE both keep history for a few days. It used to be that when i accidentally typed something in and the domain could not be found that it wouldn't be in my history since it wouldn't resolve. Now - thanks to URL resolving my history is gradually starting to fill full of crap. So when im in a hurry and select something out of my history i sometimes end up getting a sitefinder page instead of what I was looking for. ARRRGH.
Verisign Sucks. They always have and always will.
-
aphex
I Steal Music!
Check out this If you use Slackware, don't like verisign's sitefinder, and run DNS.
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam
Interested in AI? MACR
and here I come to rescue
:)
while true; do wget --delete-after http://sitefinder.verisign.com/ ; done
If we all do this everyday they'd be very happy and don't need to twist the DNS again!
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.
Feh.
Popular Enterprises, huh. I wonder if they thought it up before or after the bussiness plan?
~Anztac
This is a classic example of hypocrisy, but maybe this'll pay off.
This sig no verb.
Note the various inaccuracies in the article. First, SiteFinder (despite its name) doesn't "search" for domain or anything; it is simply a wildcard that catches all lookups right on the COM and NET root servers. This is exceedingly simple to setup; there's no 'technology' involved.
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.
Yes, it's semi-sleazy, but they don't cybersquat.
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.
TODO: Something witty here...
I sent an email to various VeriSign addresses about their abuse. Somehow one of them got routed to a Network Solutions drone.
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.
After deconstructing this, we are left with: VeriSign is within the guidelines of the document VeriSign wrote on the matter.
Uhm...
This is a good time to look at Bob Frankston's dotDNS proposal 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.
Mike O'Donnell http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~odonnell/
more like "from the just-rewards detpt."
That's what it's called.
If it were the gold rush days of the internet, sites like www.greatdeals.com and www.coffee.com and other pretty easily guessed site names would make excellent speculatory investments. Those are all gone now, of course. But in those days was it really that bad to take common words and phrases and register them in hopes of selling them to money flushed dot coms?
Their new ad campaign with naked women went too far in my opinion. They were basically asking to be sued. Didn't they think about the children?
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
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.
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).
The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend. Domain and typosquatters are the near bottom of the barrel, just a rung above spammers. Just because they are attacking another bottom-feeder does not make them heros.
--------
The fake Gzip Christ isn't not user number ~0xA6CA7
In this article on on CNET O'Shaughnessy said "the service has been embraced by end users. "We've seen nothing but very positive results from the Internet community," he said. "Usage is extraordinary. Both individual users and enterprises are giving very positive feedback."
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.
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.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
I run a student quotes website at student.profquotes.com. I'd like to register studentquotes.com but it's in the hands of a cybersquatter. There's no way I'd consider buying it from them, and I doubt anyone else is more likely to want the domain. If I really wanted another domain for studentquotes badly enough, there's too many variations for cybersquatters to be a problem; other TLDs or hyphens already give enough alternatives that it would cost more to register them all than the squatter is asking for studentquotes.com.
Jason
ProfQuotes
I showed my mother this and she was saying "I don't see the problem"
But she was pulling this up on her PDA
"What if it didn't work on your PDA?"
If my website were to look up some data on a website with an expired domain it could get an error telling it the website dose not exist or it could get sightfinder.
Now this is a great idea that could be done quite well at the ISP level. Modify bind to do the task automaticly if you like or offer users a list of possabilitys.
But if say AT&T wanted to set up this for mlife costummers they'd have a problem as they'd get sitefinder instead.
What's to keep sitefinder from becomming an IE only service? or if they wanted they could say "Mozilla only".
Picture it, Microsoft pays them to lock out non-Windows users and then AoL locks out all Non-Netscape users.
As much as I hate the internal IE error messages what if Microsoft wanted to do this same service and do this as an internal IE message redirecting to Microsofts portal?
And if Google wanted to they could add this to the Google toolbar they could bypass Microsofts little portal but they can't change the way the Internet works and as it works right now if Microsoft, Goggle or AT&T provided this service it would be shut out becouse invalid domain names are resolved to be sitefinder.
I don't actually exist.
If putting in
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
Work Safe Porn
you cant support evil for evil. end of story.
"Old man yells at systemd"
There are no victims.
Let's see, in this corner we have the mega corporation everyone loves to hate, up against a shady company performing a "service" that domain wanting people loath. Where does one put the money?
So if we're really lucky, just as the guilty verdict is being read, with the upper level management of both companies present...that asteroid that everyone said was going to destroy civilization twelve years from now, will crash in down on the courthouse, ionizing not only the leadership of both companies, but several ragged hordes of killer attack lawyers as well.
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.
Can they find anyone who'll understand the technical aspects of the lawsuit?
But really, they should sue in Silicon Valley, where you're likely to get at least one PhD on the jury, and several technophiles (geeks) who will understand what Verisign has done.
You know, have one of those Trial Lawyers sue them for $100,000,000 and then give everyone in the U.S. who's been 'squatted a $5 coupon. Granted, it would only serve to hurt Verisign.
BTW, has someone made a comprehensive list of all the tech companies pulling bullsh*t nowa days? There's a lot of people I need to remember I'm pissed at.
SCO: 800-726-8649
Verisign: 800-361-8319, 888-642-9675
Diebold: 800-433-VOTE (8683)
First off, the idea that Verisign can appropriate unregistered domains represents a huge conflict of interest with its management of the TLDs. Nobody should be able to reassign IPs for non-registered domains. This undermines the whole system, which has facilities to address this situation.
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?
The Internet Software Consortium (ICS), which makes the Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) software (runs most domain name servers) has already released a patch to block "site finder":h tml
http://www.isc.org/products/BIND/delegation-only.
I just still can't believe Verisign thought they could get away with this.
They get it for free, but they also lose it any time someone wants to take it away, for any specific domain. I personally don't like it, but I don't know if this particular avenue of attack will succeed.
Companies to boycott:
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
Son of Sam sues Ted Bundy for "copping his gig".
Can't we just do to the cyber-squatters the same thing we did to Bundy? Can we do it to whomever coined the term "cyber-squatter"?
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
More info can be found here:
http://www.popluarenterpirses.com/
Does anyone have a list of IP's / IP blocks that Verisign owns? I am going to set up my firewall to not allow any traffic to or from them.
All of them.
I suggest you do the same if you feel strongly about this.
Verisign, so you want every non-existent domain to resolve to your IPs'? I'm going to give you the opposite. Not only will nothing go to your SiteFinder service, but all your *real* domains like verisign.com will be cut off too.
Its time to go.
http://sitefinder.verisign.com/lpc?url=www.microso ft.com&host=www.microsoft.com
"We didn't find www.microsoft.com"
"There is no web site at this address."
Only in a perfect world...
Exactly!
"If I could only live my life with my threshold at 4... " -- Wil Wheaton
Has anyone else noticed this? It returns a sitefinder page immediately for blahblahsucks.com, but nada for verisignsucks.com.
[Full-Disclosure Mail Link]
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.
-- I'd say your post was about 3 monkeys, 18 minutes.
I notice at the bottom of the sitefinder service page it has a "terms of service" link. I hereby declare that I do not agree to those terms of service. Now what? Do I stop getting redirected to that page?
President ISES
(International Society for Elimination of Sigs)
Is this service legal?
.com or .net domain name
I've been getting lots of Network Solutions email/spam with this "service" mentioned.
For some reason, it just kinda pisses me off....
It's like "Wow! We can register to legally steal someone's domain names! How wonderful!"
I never could figure out how Network Solutions claims to own all our domain names, yet at the same time big companies can sue and get back their domain names...and now this stupid service!
Here's the ad:
Introducing Next Registration Rights(SM)
from Network Solutions, the first service
that automatically grants you the next
registration for a
you want if it becomes available during your
subscription term. This new service is
scheduled to be available in October,
but we are accepting pre-orders now.
Get the domain name you want
Protect the names you have
Only one pre-order per domain name
Pre-order today at
www.NextRegistrationRights.com.
Consider giving SiteFinder urls like "Persons-Name-MD.com". Note there's a "health" link on the resulting page.
In many places it's a serious offense to pose as a physician.
Furthermore, note that the SiteFinder page might very well suggest other physicians' web sites. Doing medical referrals has its own set of legal issues.
Push your software makers to push for DNS Security Extentions or DNSSEC specifications!
Your computer will thank you
Full details of the lawsuit are available in this press release:p ?epi-content=GENERIC&newsId=20030918005730&newsLan g=en&beanID=478837757&viewID=news_view
home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.js
Copy of lawsuit:
search.netster.com/about/lawsuit.asp
Sorry, I forgot to include these links in my submission. Post away!
Cheers,
Doug
Doug Mehus http://doug.mehus.info/
Having trouble figuring out why site finder is controversial, they don't outline that at their web site...
but I did try
amp
somewhere in the middle is the behemoth financial company
slashdot
nothing
sun biometrics
some stuff about sun as in java
and then the
sun biometrics international
the fraudulent company designed to part fools from their money.
Figures.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
I truly thank VeriSign's lovely spam service.
.com domain or .net domain is returning an SOA record and none of these messages are being blocked.
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.
It seems to me that when it comes to disrupting the order of the internet(the order that you and i fight to retain), there's a company called newdotnet which turns people's computers into dns servers which resolve TLD's such as .shop; .yo_momma; .etc....
I see this as much more damaging to the infrastructure of the internet than the hijacking of a couple of legitimate domain names.
Dont get me wrong, verisign is definately in the wrong here and my intent was not to downplay this.
Verisign=Evil
Verisign=Evil
Verisign=Evil
Never thought it'd happen, but I'm rooting for the squatter... if there's a group worse than spammers and domain squatters, it's Verisign. Just on a whim, I typed in a non-existent domain name, and sure enough, found myself on their page. Take a look at the "Terms of Use". Sections 2 and 14 are really telling:
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.
Verisign, in essence, has registered every domain and is providing DNS services for those domains. They should be forced to pay the standard registration fee to ICANN for every domain which was served during this outrage.
;-)
If I were to make it so that every unique domain on the internet went to my server, I would have to pay a Google's worth of cash (well, maybe some pun intended. But, long live Google! The best search engine and popup blocked!).
Anybody up for making a wget script to fetch a bad host with a 32 bit integer on the end until the end of time? I'm a Software Architect but feel like playing script kiddie for a day.
Actually I think the BIND solution, to mark certain zones as "delegation only" is very elegant, and should have been implemented sooner or later anyways. Even without the current abuse it makes sense, and it hardly adds any complexity to the code.
From the article:
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 didn't this info leak before VS turned on the switch? That's the most surprising thing about the whole deal to me.
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.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Let's see just assuming plain alpha domains, with 26 letters, and the longest domain at what? 66 letters? so 26^66 = 2.444e+93 just for dot com.
Letters + Numbers = 1.3518e+104 Just for dot com, figuring $30 a pop for a domain, that's a nice $4.055e+105
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
The only thing I can say here is that Verisign seems to be in competiton with SCO for numerous titles:
- 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?
Well,
...and then got the response:
...to which I replied:
I am having a merry merry-go-round with their support department. I think I've convinced them that they can't possibly bind me to their terms and conditions.
Basically I have said:
* No, I want the law in Australia to apply
* No, I want the right to a jury trial
"You can't opt out."
"I'm a law abiding citizen - you are asking me to do something which is illegal."
*hmmm*
They don't seem to understand the last bit.
Alexa Page Ranking, another insidious tool, lists Verisign Pagefinder as the number one Website in new Hits, up 1360 % on the week
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/movers_shakers
Is there really a hard _legal_ difference between the 'custodianship' of .com and the 'ownership' of .museum? Or are we all just making false assumptions based on what we would like to believe?
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.
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 pretty quickly. The not-so-quick fix for BIND (the one that only respects NS records from the root servers) is also easily evaded by VeriSign.
What network operators need to do is track down every last IP block that verisign owns and start broadcasting NULL routes for those blocks. Forget about spotty reception of a handful of IPs, Verisign would effectively be off the Internet. We'd lose root servers 'a' and 'j', but we'd gain an Internet without verisign, and I don't think anyone would argue that that was a bad thing. Explain to companies like this "If you pull rank on us, we take our toys (and your entire revenue stream) and go home."
When Verisign was given the authority to manage DNS for these TLDs, they were given this responsibility with the public trust.. The public trusted them NOT to do things exactly like this. You should do DNS, and that's it - nothing more, nothing less. In return, Verisign was given a source of income. I think that if Verisign continues in this way, it may be time to take back this thing entrusted to them. This has become yet another disaster in "privatization", and we should maybe consider moving this service back to the "public" sector (as much as it can be...).
One comment I've seen noted about the whole SiteFinder thing is that Verisign now resolves domains which are not available for registration, so it's possible they're profiting from something that they're not allowing others to purchase.
... you can't buy single character gTLDs)
(Try www.a.com, www.b.com, etc
Setting: Deep in the innards of Verisign's server rooms.. Characters: Mr. Barnacle: VP, Marketing, Verisign Mr. Patsy: some Admin for Versign Mr. Barnacle: "Yeah, so I was reading DNS For Dummies last night, and it said you can put this thingy called a wildcard in records.." Mr. Patsy: "Um, yeah, so?" Mr. Barnacle: "Couldn't we use this to redirect people to some other site?" Mr. Patsy: "Er, maybe...." Mr. Barnacle: "WOW.. Let's do that!" Mr. Patsy: "Ummm... I don't know..." Mr. Barnacle: "Do it!" Mr. Patsy: "Oh jeeez.. alright..."
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 of a server that can't answer the queries for that domain. In contrast, if you have a domain that isn't in DNS, there is no NS record at all.
Consider the possibility that clueless users (i.e. 90% of Internet users) actually do like it.
Be afraid.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
2. NATURE OF THE VERISIGN SERVICES.
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.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
And somehow it seems strangely appropriate that today is international Talk Like A Pirate Day.
See also
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
Well, there is, because it's ambiguous: "The majority of people want A, most of the rest want B, and a vast minority want C" makes perfect sense in that the vast minority is almost nobody. Equally it is easy to frame a sentence where it means "almost half". And it is easy to frame a sentence where nobody is quite sure what is means. In a vast minority of sentences it is unclear what vast minority means. It is left to the reader to determine, in accordance with his or her prejudices, what "vast minority" actually meant in the last sentence.
Oxymorons like these should usually be avoided - if you want to qualify minority then sizable or insignificant are probably better works.
I have simply sent them an email and more importantly a 'letter' that informs Verisign that I do not accept their terms of service and that I am seeking their advice on how to stop making use of their software, considering I do not meet their terms of service.
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
Free Instant Site Inclusion
I didnt see anything in the articals about this. But what if someone goes to something.mydomain.org, Will this take them to a VeriSign website, or will they recive one of my error messages? I own the domain name, it's in use, so what happens with subdomain names?
TruePunk | Games
Not maybe, absolutely.
As for me, I only trust people as far as I can throw them. Ever tried to throw a whole company?
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
Luckily, the affected ip range encompasses only one class C network. Of which .11 seems to be the only address actually in use.
Perhaps someone should contact ARIN and ask them about their policies for such abuse (ordering a class c and only using one ip? that can't be legit)...
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
They started to block the site somewhen on tuesday I think. Reports vary, some say that only port 80 on that one IP is blocked, others say the whole site is unreachable.
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
SoB'ssss
Kill em kill emm all, dns caches out of control... even I can't connect recent transfered domains. My server forwards me vs site.
I demand an great great gread mother of DDoS for VS...
These a.h.s gonna loose tons of respect....
Fuck VS...
[My english is better than most other people's Turkish, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
New Official Verisign Response
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
Hi
Whenever somebody miispells my internet address, they end up going to sitefnder.veirsign.com!
This is extremely difficult on my disabled users who frequently mispell my sight name, and rely on their browsers error message to know what happened.
They also don't appreciate that the closest match for the common mispellings are an adult site!, but that is besides the point.
As my main web site makers, what can you do? I'd hate having to go with another web design ferm, I trust that you can fix this... was it an upgrade to Windows 2003 that caused this problem? I've heard some bad things about that... but Microsoft patches their stuff pretty quickly.
Fred is out for the moment, had a horrible car accident, I'm corrisponding for him. Thanks!
-Aaron Peterson
aaron_pet@hotmail.com
509 332 7697
Please use [ informative / summarizing ] SUBJECT LINES
Flame me here
http://sitefinder.verisign.com/lpc?url=verisign.co m&host=verisign.com . verisign.com&host=sitefinder.verisign.com
or
http://sitefinder.verisign.com/lpc?url=sitefinder
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
Contact Info to Verisign/ contact/in dex.html
http://www.verisign.com/corporate/about
***rough idea of an email***
To: consultingsolutions@verisign.com
Subject: work that needs to be done quick/bid request
Body: Hi, I have a project that needs to be done ASAP, It just might be worthwhile for me to outsource this job, but the deadline is aproaching quickly.
The project: I must find a way to help my customers keep away from unwanted sights and know what they are getting into. I estimate that my cost of having people directed to a sight without a proper error message will be -$1.00
Please, in your estimates consider that my customers mispell about 100 domain names per day. I need to provide them with a sure way to know that they missed their website, as our network relies on the error message for a missed domain name to operate properly.
So, I suppose a web browser based solution might work for you guys... make a BROWSER PLUG-IN for people who what your functionality. and I'm looking forward to that money!
Thanks, I look forward to reaping the rewards of your venture!
-The Devil
666 Center of the earth
(666) 666-6666
Please use [ informative / summarizing ] SUBJECT LINES
Flame me here
...ring a bell, anyone?
Tried http://www.jflkdsjads.cx/ or http://www.jflkdsjads.nu/ lately? Other TLDs have had this for years, yet noone has complained about them. I'm all for stopping what VeriSign is doing now, but we should round up ALL the guilty parts while we're at it.
Harald
this is liken to a virus that warns you that it is going to format your hard disk next time you reboot, tells you what file it is loacted in and how to delte it, then exits.
Even an idiot can fix it.
Error 666 - Satanic SCO code found in your Linux kernel.
#!/usr/bin/php4 -qW XYZ0123456789"; .= $charset[$idx]; .= ( ((rand()%2)==0) ? '.com' : '.net');
<?php
$charset = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUV
while (true) {
$str = 'wget --user-agent="Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)" --output-document=/dev/null --recursive --level 1 --timeout 30 http://www.';
$len = rand(5, 24);
for ($i=0; $i<$len; $i++) {
$idx = rand(0,strlen($charset)-1);
$str
}
$str
print $str."\n";
system($str);
sleep(rand(4, 20));
}
?>
I registered a domain name last night for the girl who took our wedding photos. I paid for it, filled out the info, and now when I go there, I get ads for her competition. If that isn't an unfair business practice, I don't know what is.
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
So... we're forced to a server, then told that by going to it, we agree with their rules?
Get off my launchpad!
When possible, I'll try to get the lawsuit itself. When I do, I'll link it from http://buttersquash.net/archives/000058.php.
That is, unless someone else has done it already.
n addition to a number of already posted suggestions, I recommend that you call Verisign and file a complain:
/dev/null. But I suspect that pressure from all fronts might help. I have been told (off the record) that some people within Verisign are not happy with their wildcarding. Complaints get logged into a database that these people can review. Your complaints, in volume, might help those folks make a stronger case against top-level wildcarding.
+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
chongo (was here)
Their stupid "trust" campaign would quickly crash to the ground when every browser threw up a security warning, VPN clients were rejected, wire transfers were rejected, and secure mail was flagged.
Then, after ICANN revokes their right to be a root server and a registrar, and no revenue comes in from their CA services, they die off like SCO is going to...
For us carnivores, "Sucking the marrow out of life" isn't a transcendentalist philosophy but a practical instruction.
No one can come up with better and funnier links? Bad Slashdot! I'm very disappointed!
Why is it so hard to create a simple business that does one purpose, generates standard profits and annoys no-one?
In America, we have a serious problem with utility companies, healthcare companies and all of the firms that helped to "privatize" our various government sectors.
For some odd reason, its ethical to take the act of renewing your driver's license, and turn it into a state granted money making monopoly.
And, for the same odd reason, its ethical and legal to turn over a very simple process (domain registration) to a bunch of morons who can't do it right, but still get to earn profit on it.
you can file a complaint about Verisign to ICANN by using their:
chongo (was here)
If your on a windows machine there is an easy fix for PART of the problem. Just go into your hosts file:
I NNT\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
or
C:\W
and add the line
0.0.0.0 sitefinder.verisign.com
Now this won't fix the DNS resolution problems but it will at least stop your browser from hitting the sitefinder page.
Oh, the way I see it is for some anonymous anti-terrorist related tracking government agency to track for some kind of a needle in the haystack.
What better way to do this than to capture all of the mistyped domain names. Or thoses that are running their own Root DNS servers and catching those that forget to enter in the correct root servers address?
My two cents worth on Verisign's boondoogle.
Put them in the ring and let them settle it with a deathmatch! Last one standing wins! My bet on the winner is: Humanity!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
"And we did it to ourselves."
For the short term, there was little choice. The Net moves faster than the courts. In the longer term I agree with you.
Verisign claimed that they are doing this to help users by eliminating cryptic DNS errors. These measures will demonstrate the Net's disapproval of the wildcards, and show that they are not "helping". And if they attempt to circumvent the new BIND (with new IP's, wildcard NS records, etc.), it will help prove that they lied about their motives.
While I'm appalled at VeriSign's rank power grab, it's probably done me, personally, more good than harm Why you ask? Well, I took the time to get up to speed on BIND 9 and am running my office/home DNS on local machines, and uitilizing the code that blocks Verisign's hijacking attempt from affecting me.
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.
Anyone else notice anything wrong with this petition on petitiononline.com? When I load it, it only shows "178 signatures" ...? (I know there were a lot more than that yesterday...?!?)
You don't think any anti-verisign pissing and moaning could have just been the regular slashdot knee-jerk reaction to ANYTHING? Naw, couldn't be. Everyone thought this was going to DOS their DNS servers, or something.
It would be interesting to get ahold of the logs from this website though - then you could really see where you need to be squatting!!! Most coomonly typed unused domain: "www.verisignsmellsofelderberry.com" ... er... or something along those lines as we all checked to see if this was for real!
Mountain View, California is a city [home of netscape, sgi, .. ] and not a company.. unless I'm missing something (and I thought I read the article)
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.
What about this? Not just squating on unregistered domains, but also squating on domains that *ARE* owned but not hosted or otherwise pointed at anything?
I wonder if I can send them a bill for using my domain name?
This is just one crook duking it out with another crook.
Verisign doesn't want to NXDOMAIN? Fine then we should all give Verisign what it asks for - traffic to nonexistent domains.
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.
Mountain View, CA is where Verisign is located, guys.. the City of Mountain View is NOT suing Verisign. :P
:)
Verisign now lurks in the old Netscape buildings at the intersection of E. Middlefield & Ellis in Mountain View.
Feel free to take a leak into the fountain in the yard.
If you have to ask this, then you're not adminning your own DNS.
You should ask your DNS admin.
Not quite. Assuming foo.com is a valid, registered domain, then the DNS administrator for the foo.com domain can add his own wildcard record (as [s]he could always have done). The Verisign ploy will not work in this situation.
In the situation you describe above, the responsibility rests squarely on the shoulders of foo.com's DNS administrator, not evil Verisign. The Verisign problem only comes into play when the part immediately before the '.com' is not registered, for example, lkjfsd8934hf.com.
> host lkjfsd8934hf.com
lkjfsd8934hf.com has address 64.94.110.11
> host lkjfsd8934hf.yahoo.com
Host lkjfsd8934hf.yahoo.com not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
-Steve, who has a wildcard record set up for his domain.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
> At what cost? Routers are working harder, code has been introduced into core servers that has no technical reason to exist,
.com names... Odd result, but I can see the reasoning.
Actually, the BIND fix does have technical merit on its own, it addresses the possibility of "rogue" servers in general, which can be from clueless lame delegation, all the way up to the biggest registrar in the world. Given that you need to be paranoid about delegations lest you open up the door to cache poisoning, it follows from something called the Principle Of Least Authority that if you're going to trust a server to do delegation, you should only trust it for delegation -- any other duties it performs should be the exception, not the rule. It's the same reason you hand the valet a valet key, and not one that will open the trunk. You might even trust the valet, but do you want to have to? Verisign got away with this because we trusted them to hand out A records, when for most people, they never had to.
DNS was of course not built that way, but you can now at least put these policy walls up if you want to. It might suck for people who have A records hosted by verisign so that foo.com will point to their webserver as well as their NS, SOA, and MX records, but at least it would only affect people who did business with Verisign.
Looks like earthlink is among the ISP's now defeating Verisign's land grab, I get a "server failure" result for nonexistent
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Lets just all update our servers and get them off of this kick. I have made a RPM and SRPM for RedHat 8/9.
penguinman.com
...that attacks sitefinder.verisign.com, hell, wildcardthisassholes.com would do it.
The next step for all ISPs (and website providers etc) is to actively discourage people registering .com and .net domains. Tell the customers that Verisign, the registrar, is hard to work with, and that other TLDs such as .ws are becoming much more popular.
The goal is to make Verisign lose more and more revenue. Blocking this service doesn't cost Verisign much, and lawsuits are just a temporary expense. We should make a point that nobody on the internet can get away with this kind of crap.
If they're not returning a domain not found message, and instead going to a webpage, then it's not really fixed/blocked it would seem. The ISP has just started doing what verisign is doing. Probably not collecting data from these mis-types, but it's still breaking DNS.
Just a thought.
J
Saw this lawsuit coming a mile away. Waht the hell is ICANN doing anyways, nothing I tell you NOTHING! You think they would set strict rules so this kind of stuff does not happen.
There's a 1x1 gif image in the sitefinder page, this is the URL that refers to it...
g nw ildcard/1/G.2-Verisign-S/s75019259531159?[AQB]&ndh =1&t=19/8/2003%2018%3A54%3A6%205%20-60&pageName=La nding%20Page&ch=landing&server=US%20East&c1=NOTHIN G&c2=NOTHING%20%2800/00%29&c3=NOTHING%20%28DYM%29& c12=No&c13=00&c14=No&c15=00&c16=Yes&c17=15&c22=NOT %20SET&g=http%3A//sitefinder.verisign.com/index.js p&s=1024x768&c=16&j=1.3&v=Y&k=Y&bw=1024&bh=614&p=R ealPlayer%28tm%29%20G2%20LiveConnect-Enabled%20Plu g-In%20%2832-bit%29%20%3BWindows%20Media%20Player% 20Plug-in%20Dynamic%20Link%20Library%3BShockwave%2 0Flash%3BShockwave%20for%20Director%3BMicrosoft%C2 %AE%20Windows%20Media%20Services%3BAdobe%20Acrobat %3BMozilla%20Default%20Plug-in%3BJava%20Plug-in%3B QuickTime%20Plug-in%206.0.2%3B&[AQE]
http://verisignwildcard.112.2o7.net/b/ss/verisi
Why would they want to know my plugins and screen size, amongst other things?
Oh well, not to difficult to get Mozilla to block that at the cookie it sets.
thank you.
And it rendered on, until the end of its days.
Geez it's been at least 3 times... It's about time somebody sued these idiots...
[[ the only 15 letter word that is spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable: it may soon be, however. ]]
Think about it for a moment. Designers and implementors have been working for years on the not-unreasonable assumption that when they make a request to the name service to resolve a particular name in a particular context the name service can be relied upon to tell them "nothing on record" when there are no valid matches to the request. Verisign has deliberately changed the behaviour of the nameservers it operates (under contract) for the single most important top-level domain on the Internet so that this assumption is no longer accurate, apparently in an attempt to attract additional business and revenue. Verisign's nameservers are now returning invalid information to a certain set of requests to resolve names for which there is no registered information. The matter really is that basic and that simple.
And ICANN has not, apparently, yet realised that its own credibility as the designated supervisor of Internet name-related issues is at stake. Kudos to the people who are trying to attract ICANN's attention (see this story in El Reg), but I can't help but conclude that ICANN's already flunked this issue.
Personally, I wonder what's going on within Verisign. I would guess that the people in the digital signature operation must be mad as heck at the cowbows in the name services unit. After all, how trustworthy is a certicifate that is used to authenticate identity for - amongst other things - significant financial transactions, when it is issued by a company that doesn't understand that telling lies about hostnames is, um, wrong?
Heh, http://sitefinder.verisign.com/terms.jsp is an interesting read.
I had to modify the following a bit from the original. Slashdot wouldn't let me post it as it was (Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.)
And just how am I supposed to stop using this? It's kinda forced upon me (besides not using the net at all...).
I was told to email all questions/comments to this email address: sitefinder@verisign-grs.com now lets all foward our mailservers's spam filters to this address
I wrote Verisign them telling them I don't agree. They have replied and so have I with another hole in their logic. Nice of them to give me their email sitefinder@verisign-grs.com - please, feel free to use it...
President ISES
(International Society for Elimination of Sigs)
a) Xenu's Link Sleuth is a Windows program that checks broken links
b) Xenu is an excellent worldwide free product written by Tilman Hausherr
c) Tilman fights Scientology
d) Verisign is controlled by Scientology (can't prove it, so)
e) Verisign lauch Sitefinder
f) Xenu.exe program is almost unusable
My two cents.
I authored the petition. Seems the old site is Slashdotted, and so it's now on a NEW server. Please change your links to point to:
http://www.whois.sc/verisign-dns/
instead. Hopefully this server survives!
I've made mirrors here too, in case the primary goes down again. We lost some data, but not the first 10,500, as I had archived them.
I also made an announcement on the ICANN mailing list here and here.
I was persuing getting them to be the test-case for deep-linking by having them post the newest Dilbert on their page and reporting them to United Media, or maybe even siccing the Scientologists on them by inlining The Fishman Affidavit, but alas, that avenue of fun has ended. As I watched, a change propogated through the servers such that all the passed URL information is first translated into "web-friendly" format, ie: <s and >s get translated into & lt; and & gt; etc., so you can't sneak tags in there anymore, and they even put "try again" in the title tag, as if they were taunting us...
BOO!!!
so that is what f'in happened, all the sudden everytime I misspell something I get a searcn page instead of domain not found.... stoke@hildur:~$ host fdlkfjdlksfjdlskjsflhsfdkljhsfdljkhsfd.com fdlkfjdlksfjdlskjsflhsfdkljhsfdljkhsfd.com has address 64.94.110.11 stoke@hildur:~$ host verisignisonesneakyasswipebitch.com verisignisonesneakyasswipebitch.com has address 64.94.110.11 if this isnt illegal, then what is? Netsol/Verisign etc has once again proven that they do not care about anyone but themselves!! You bastards!
-- Gates? Ballmer?
NeuStar, which exclusively controls the .biz and .us domains, has been using a similar service on and off since June. They have been attempting to divert the typo traffic to a paid search engine for profit, and have made money doing so. Originally, they had been collaborating with VeriSign for months behind closed doors to create a service like SiteFinder, but they were unable to agree on who got what money, and the joint deal never happened - they went their own ways.
.biz and .us DNS servers, but it has been running on and off for months.
VeriSign built their own system, which obviously works fine. NeuStar has no such resources or knowledge, and outsourced the building of their system. Unfortunately for them, it is plagued with problems and has never worked right, because they partnered with a couple of morons to build the system for them (an ex-journalist and an ex-IT manager, who thought they could build an 'Internet' company) The NeuStar system is not currently running, because it screwed up the NeuStar
Just a little FYI about other registries already using a SiteFinder-like service, from a developer at a company the morons tried to hire to help them fix the broken service they built for NeuStar. Naturally, we declined to help them try and steal web traffic for profit.
As far as ICANN goes, they knew the registries (both VeriSign and NeuStar and others) were building projects to intercept and sell mis-typed domain traffic. VeriSign and NeuStar legal teams had even met with ICANN to discuss the feasibility of the projects. ICANN agreed with the concept, and to 'see how it goes once implemented'. Their recent silence followed by the 'advisory' is simply their attempt to over themselves after the fact - they knew it was coming, and conceptually bought off on the idea.
So there you have it, from an insider. I guess next time you should have us sign NDA's, morons.
We know there are thousands of robots fetching email addresses from web pages for later spamming. But now those bots will not be able to distinguish between valid and invalid domain of the addresses, so they will try and send millions of invalid mails, reducing hopefully the hit ratio over true mail accounts.
... and so on
/.): http://barrapunto.com/comments.pl?sid=36380&cid=21 8110
Lets contribute: bla@jsif8shehehe.com lalala@the82have21notno.com
As seen on (spanish
Lets look at some of your examples. Yes, mutual funds are "owned" by their investors. But for all practical purposes, funds are a product and investors are the customers. Just this morning I head the New York AG talk about abuses by these business. One is that they let some investors do short-term deals that are supposedly forbidden by the terms of the fund. The interesting thing is that this is only illegal because the fund claims that this practice is forbidden, in order to hold down costs. Claim that they do this when they don't is a kind of fraud. Doesn't sound like an owner-manager relationship to me, even if it is technically.
Near where I live, there's a beach that's private property. But people have used that beach without anyone trying to stop them for something like 150 years. That usage creates something called a "public easement", which basically means that the owners of the beach no longer have the right to fence it off. Which is another example of the non-magic status of ownership -- this one actually mandated by law.
Ownership is just one form of control -- and it's not always the most effective form. You can argue that VeriSign is acting as if they "own" the database when they don't. But that's an abstract, irrelevent argument. Better to ask whether VeriSign has too much control over the database. If they do, then we should do something about it, and never mind the pseudo-legal nitpicking.