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Verisign Plans to Revive SiteFinder Advertising 'Service'
kiddailey writes "Claiming that their own independent examination of their controversial redirection service has found 'no security or stability problems', and that 'Internet users consider the service a helpful tool to navigate the web', Verisign has announced that it will give a 30- to 60-day notice before resuming the SiteFinder 'feature' that it voluntarily shut-down a couple of weeks ago."
Repeat after me, the World Wide Web is not the entire Internet. Now many applications will resolve a screwed up domain name and try to make a connection to Verisign's site. Instead of getting a "unknown host" programs will get a "service not found" which is a very different error. Or at least that is how I see it, I am only moderately knowledgable about DNS issues.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
From the Verizon site article:
"Prior to ICANN's October 3 directive to shut down the service, Site Finder had
been used more than 48 million times by Internet users to get where they want to go online."
"...has been used more than 48 million times...". Makes it sound like folks are eagerly flocking to the Verizon web site to 'use' this service. It's as if the highway administration shut down all lanes of I-95 and then celebrated the increased HOV usage.
The Army reading list
The ICANN Information page on Verisign's Wildcard Service" elicits comments from Members of the Internet community. Emails are to be copied to wildcard-comments@icann.org A selection of comments is viewable here.
I'd suggest making your comments now.
Regarding the Verisign survey...more information about it is in this article. Excerpts:
The survey, a telephone poll of 1,000 internet users who could recall seeing Site Finder, was conducted by Markitecture and Harris Interactive and commissioned by VeriSign. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 5%
On the opposing side, Tucows Inc, a domain name registrar that competes with VeriSign, said a poll of its resellers (generally ISPs and web hosting companies) indicated that 90% of respondents wanted Site Finder turned off.
Please, ICANN, you've always sucked before, but maybe there's hope for you yet. Enforce the terms of the contract with Verisign with extreme prejudice and terminate these scumballs.
Under 15 U.S.C. 1125d, cybersquatting is the illegal act of registering a domain intentionally to be confused with another. Thus, Ford could not register Chevrelet.com to themselves and hope people looking for Chevy's mistype and go to the Ford site.
From what I understand, sitefinder is being used in almost the exact same way as the scenario I just mentioned. Verisign's activity is prohibited at least by the spirit, if not by the letter of the law.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
1) a banker
2) an enginee^H^H^H^H^H^H^H MSCE
3) 3 Marketing droids
4) the woman in the coffe shop across the road
5) and
They must have quite the dream team of experts to come to such a conclusion.
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
Oh those wonderful guys at VeriSign, giving us this 'service' free of charge! I mean, this is something I'd pay $30, even $60 a month to use!
They've always been one of those 'for-a-better-internet' companies.
God Bless Them
DNS queries would be taken at random from the three providers. The registrars would, instead of registering with just Verisign, register with all three. Any registrar that didn't would find its customers complaining about DNS resolving issues.
And to prevent Verisign from trying to drop a spanner in the works by not reregistering the domains it controls, ICANN could introduce the changes slowly, having, say, two of the root servers pointing at the alternative providers at the beginning, with the others still pointing at Verisign's network. Verisign's customers, assuming Verisign tried to fight it, would get poor DNS service immediately, without it becoming unusable. Everyone else wouldn't. Verisign's Registrar end would thus lose customers fairly rapidly.
Why would this benefit ICANN? Well, it's fairly obvious: by doing so, ICANN can easily simply suspend Verisign (or any other abusive DNS root operator) without negatively impacting the Internet. Right now, Verisign believes it can get away with what it's done because it has a monopoly on .COM/.NET, and has enough of the registrar market to be able to prevent a switch. ICANN cannot switch to an alternative DNS operator without the direct cooperation of Verisign, and Verisign has said in the past they wouldn't cooperate.
If ICANN is serious, it needs to do something about Verisign's monopoly immediately. Because of the Registrar/Infrastructure split, it now has the capability of doing so. Rather than sending letters containing vague threats of action, it's time it actually did something.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Verisign's statement is probably true: Many users (excepting myself) would probably prefer being offered alternative instead of an error message.
However, the proper place to implement this is at the browser level, not at the network level. So, you can grant their statement is true but it doesn't justify their case.
However, there are some very important differences --
The IE feature only affects web browsing. It doesn't break email, for example. Verisign's change does. This is by far the biggest issue.
The IE feature probably doesn't remember `incorrect' URLs in the browser history
The IE feature can be turned off, either in IE or by not using IE. To turn off Verisign, you need to patch your name server.
The second (article || press release) yields a clue as to how it was done this time:
Somehow I suspect that the people who don't find 404s "extremely frustrating" and do have the knowledge to "see a downside to this...enhancement" weren't part of the survey. So 53% of clueless PHBs think SiteFinder "improves the Internet". BFD.*
.
* "Big Furry Deal." - Dogbert
Life is like surrealism: if you have to have it explained to you, you can't afford it.
I think we should have Microsoft crusherize them.
:)
Next patch to Internet Explorer, they should throw in some code that brings up their own search page whenever a domain name resolves to Verisign's computers.
I have few complaints with Microsoft's service, because the behavior is happening at the application level, not the infrastructure level. I mean, what good is having a 95% browser share if you can't smack down the little bastards that try to muscle in on your turf?
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
I've had good luck with GoDaddy.com for my domains.
--
www.nitemarecafe.com
Standards are standards, yes, but what about the right to innovate and to make it pay?
Of course there is a right to innovate and make it pay, but Verisign has a prior obligation to uphold role they took on. Police don't innovate after they get the job. Neither do surgeons or firefighters. There are specific people who's role is to innovate, such as lawmakers, medical researchers, and scientists. And those innovations, after shown to be safe and advantageous, are carrie over to the first set of people. Police implement what the lawmakers say... etc.
There are consequences when someone with a well defined duty strays from it. In this case Verisign agreed to resolve names as the current standards dictate, not to say, "I feel like doing it differently today."
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
I find it odd that no one has been discussing the Sitefinder TOS. Specifically, paragraph 6, which states:
6. Modification by VeriSign.
At any time VeriSign may modify or terminate these terms of use, its websites and the VeriSign Services and may at any time discontinue your use of the VeriSign Services without any notice to you, and without liability to you, any other user or any third party. Please review these Terms of Use from time to time so that you will be aware of any changes. Your continued use of the VeriSign Services constitutes your agreement to all such terms, conditions, and notices.
So I can be found to a "Terms of Use" agreement simply by mistyping a domain name? How is this legal? And are there any situations where a user could be caught in violation of this "agreement"?
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
I'm ready to run a background wget that surfs a random URL 10 times a second.
Please join me.
The World Wide Web uses more protocols than just HyperText Transfer Protocol. FTP resources (for example) are part of the WWW as well. This is why Tim Berners-Lee (whose definition of term is pretty darn authoritative, I'd say) took the trouble to include a protocol designation in his specification for the Web's URLs (not realising at the time that one day millions of people would find themselves having to type that awkward "http://" construct over and over).