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VeriSign Responds To ICANN's SiteFinder Advisory
dmehus writes "VeriSign's Naming and Directory Services division has written to ICANN President and CEO Paul Twomey regarding the recent advisory concerning VeriSign's DNS wildcard redirection service. In the letter, VeriSign's Rusty Lewis says that they are open to independent and objective technical concerns expressed by various Internet bodies; they have formed their own "independent" panel of industry leading experts to produce its own, separate report; and they will not voluntarily suspend SiteFinder. It's a very terse response, and frankly, I'd have expected more from them. Slashdot readers are encouraged to visit ICANNWatch for in-depth, expert discussion on this and other issues."
I think it's time for ICANN to look for someone else to run the NET and COM TLDs. Not only are they unwilling to suspend SiteFinder after an enormous public outcry and a direct request from ICANN, but they didn't even bother telling anyone they were going to do this in the first place ahead of time. This is absolutely terrible, and I hope ICANN finds someone else to manage these TLDs
Okay, so I can see and understand the effect wildcarding had on the domains, and why it's bad thing.
.net and .com domains? If not, who can?
I'm also familar with the basic structure of the DNS network. However, I'm not familar with the regulatory system.
Can someone explain who regulates who gets to control what domains? Can ICANN revoke Verisign's control of the
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
of SiteFinder is the fact that non-English speakers no longer receive an error message in their own language, but are confounded with some bizarre English language site which certainly wasn't where they were trying to get to.
Here is a little script that I whipped up to find out which TLDs have wildcard records.
p root.zone.gz
#!/bin/sh
rm -f root.zone root.zone.gz
wget -q ftp://ftp.internic.com/domain/root.zone.gz
gunzi
for i in $(grep ' NS ' root.zone | awk '{print $1'} | sort -u); do
host -ta "*.$i" 2>/dev/null
done
rm -f root.zone root.zone.gz
Are you paranoid if you know that they just want to know everything you say and do?
ICANN can revoke their authorization last I heard. They are pretty much push-overs for corporations so I don't see any top down remedies to this blatent miss-representation of their powers.
On second thought, here is my idea: Have Verisign pay ICANN for every bogus returned DNS request, since technically Verisign has registered billions of domains, I'd say that ICANN is entitled to a mightly large chunk of Verisign revenues. More than the service is worth? One can only hope.
Bye!
14. AGREEMENT TO BE BOUND.
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.
IANAL, but is there any legal precidence about this type of licence? Isn't this the same sort of thing as having to open a sealed box to be able to read the licence, which then states that by unsealing the box you've agreed to the licence?
I have a feeling that their licence would totally fall over in court - since there is no consent - which means that nothing in the licence would be enforcable, and despite what section 12 says (they're not liable for damages/whatever resulting from their 'service'), you could probably do something like.. sue them for any spam (provided your jurisdiction has laws against spam) that got past your spam filters because it failed the valid domain name check.
Speak before you think
(btw, /. wouldn't let me post that as it was, in all caps. Why do lawyers do that? It is a proven fact that people often skip past sections of text like that, since it seems like noise and the brain just filters it out.. Is that just another tactic by lawyers (besides making licence agreements inane, long, and boring in the first place) to make you skip over certain sections? Make you think you read it all and agree anyways, even though your brain just filtered out the part removing them of all liablity..
Speak before you think
Has anyone noticed that they are tracking the clickthroughs of the search results. (Note: google does not do this)
They are building a huge database of behavior. It is tied to your ip address. I wonder what their policy is on releasing that information to the government? (they originally were government chartered)
Hell. I wonder if they were put up to it by the Department of Homeland Securiy.
At the very least, it will prove to be an invaluable, and highly marketable database.
I just called got someone on the line pretty quickly (less then a minute)
:)
I asked politly how I can turn off the Sitefinder service (yes I know exactly how it works, but I figured that would be a good way to approach it.)
The person then asked for my name and email (which I gladly gave)
He then respond with, at this time we have no plans to turn off the site finder service.
For which I responded, I read your TOS and it says that if I don't agree to the terms that I shouldn't use the service, and repeated that I wanted to have it disabled
He said that he would send me some information on it.
While this call I am sure is insignificant, if all of slashdot started calling.. that would be something.. at the least.
PS. yes I know how to null route it.. thank you
From the Terms of Service:My question to Verisign was "I'm dissatisfied. What does 'to discontinue use of the Verisign services' mean? I can move many domains to other TLDs, pull the Verisign root certificates from a few hundred workstations, cancel a PayFlow account that handles a few hundred thousand dollars per month, and have my clients cancel several thousand dollars worth of SSL certificates. Is that what you want me to do?"
Again, no response as yet.
If you check out Verisigns traffic page at Alexa (http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details ?q=&url=http://www.verisign.com), you can see why they aren't easily giving up their sitefinder project.
It may seem like a lot of effort, but, if everyone who hates this service just sends them a few words saying so, by email, by putting the following list of every address they have into their send line, they wont have an email system at all :) And it might be just a little fun too!
Here they are :) All 1 line, with , inserted, so you can just copy and paste it :)
consultingsolutions@verisign.com, websitesales@verisign.com, verisales@verisign.com, clientpki@verisign.com, internetsales@verisign.com, paymentsales@verisign.com, dnssales@verisign.com, digitalbranding@verisign.com, vts-mktginfo@verisign.com, channel-partners@verisign.com, premiersupport@networksolutions.com, authenticode-support@verisign.com, objectsigning-support@verisign.com, enterprise-sslsupport@verisign.com, vps-support@verisign.com, webhelp@verisign.com, practices@verisign.com, renewal@verisign.com, vts-csrgroup@verisign.com, info@verisign-grs.com
*There's Klingons on the starboard bow, scrape em off Jim!*
Seriously though, someone should write a Windows virus that disables this thing from half the internet...