VeriSign Shutting Down Site Finder

00420 writes "VeriSign, the administrator of the .com and .net domains, made plans to shut down its new Site Finder service Friday, after the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ordered the company to undo controversial changes. Of course they're not taking it down because it affected the internet, they're just doing it to keep good relations with the technical community. (Seems a little late for that doesn't it?)" The shutdown is not complete yet, though: VeriSign hasn't changed their wildcard DNS entry (64.94.110.11).

Comments

Too little too late

[Tack]

I won't be doing any future business with Verisign, and I plan to transfer my domains to another registrar.

I never much liked Verisign in the past, but since I already had an account there, using them to register new domains was simply the path of least resistance. But their SiteFinder is the straw that broke the camel's back.

Jason.

But is that all?

[WanderingGhost]

Call me paranoid, but... I wonder if they'll try to revert the situation, or come up with some other (equally hazardous) idea to replace this one. If they invested some money into the idea, I guess they won't give up that easily.

So... nothing about those lawsuits?

[Gwala]

they're just doing it to keep good relations with the technical community.

So, it has nothing to do with the three lawsuits by godaddy, netster and their ilk?

Riight.

-Gwala

Aren't you cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple solution. Everyone just has to manually edit their HOSTS file every time Verisign changes something.

Good thing people like you are around to tell us these things.

We know why they are doing it . . .

[werdna]

Of course they're not taking it down because it affected the internet, they're just doing it to keep good relations with the technical community.

Nonsense. They have already demonstrated significant contempt for the technical community -- remember their original response to ICANN's advisory?

They are doing it because ICANN's last letter put their super-duper exclusive right to operate the DNS in play. Maybe ICANN could terminate, maybe not -- but who would put the entire business on the line for this opportunity -- particularly when there still is a chance to negotiate something like that in the future?

A few things

[m0i]

I find interesting that Verisign requested 3 days before shutting down the service to give time for the tech community to adjust.. Did they do this when the service kicked in?
Also, a quick hint to all of you stuck with Verisign to renew because the domain is past due:
Verisign renewal
Pay 15USD instead of 35USD for the very same 1 year reneal service.. Ain't that great?

Re:Starwars Moment

[Theatetus]

Easy: the one way to guarantee us geeks will get our panties in a BIND (heh heh) is to have a Responsible Designated Party (tm) violate an RFC or standard. The standard says a DNS server does not return an IP address when no such host or domain exists, NOT that the DNS server resolves the request to some "default no such domain" domain.

I think it also irked a lot of people because it really shows how much the Web has been pushing out all other Internet protocols to the point that the rest don't seem to matter to the Powers That Be anymore. Quite a few Internet users, I imagine, access email and news (and even chat) through the Web. But the other protocols are still there, and still in use.

Personally, it pissed me off because I administer several nameservers and when I mistype a domain in a dig or nslookup I want to SEE IMMEDIATELY that no such domain exists rather than remembering "oh right that's the Sitefinder IP address". Some of the scripts I've written depend, in fact, on nslookup saying "server can't find yaoho.com" and I've had to instead look for the sitefinder IP address.

Anyways, short answer is: geeks hate it because we tend to believe in standards since adhering to standards is the only reason the Internet got off the ground in the first place and it's just as important nowadays that we keep them up.

Re:How Does VeriSign Even Stay In Business?

[mabu]

Verisign's connections with the government are MUCH more insideous than most people know.

I still believe the whole concept of charging for domains was technically illegal. They had a grant from the government to manage the TLDs and almost EXACTLY like what happened in the DNS redirection debacle, they decided to arbitrarily change the terms of their service in direct conflict with the agreement under which they were operating.

At the time of the domain charge scam, they got away with it in part, due to the inciteful activity of one big corporation that decided to register virtually every common name they could think of, from diarrhea.com to diapers.com. So the public turned the other way and didn't question the legality of the domain charge in the first place. Only later did someone challenge this and something like half the charges were ruled illegal. But who got their money back? Nobody to the best of my knowledge. NSI stole millions of dollars from the Internet community. What happened to this money?

Then there is the whole issue of the ridiculous terms of service Verisign/NSI employ which are arguably legal in the first place relative to managing domains. Up until recently, we had a domain that legally didn't require any renewal fee (because it was registered before NSI had the facist TOS agreement) but when we changed the nameserver, we couldn't do so without agreeing to the new terms and then were liable for renewal charges.

Distribution Point

[Scoria]

Many installations of several Web browsers are susceptible to exploitation. If SiteFinder were somehow compromised externally or internally, one could hypothetically distribute malicious software to a prodigious group of individuals. According to the relevant Yahoo! article, approximately 1.5 million clients were redirected to the "service" daily. Imagine the possibilities!