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A Snag For Verisign's Suit Against ICANN
Dinglenuts writes "Looks like Verisign just received a setback in their lawsuit against ICANN. Verisign sued ICANN for making them take down Sitefinder, but the judge said that their case was 'awfully vague.' The extensive mischief caused by Verisign's new attempts at 'service' have been well documented on Slashdot."
Reader Mz6 points out the same AP story as carried by USA Today.
IANAL but ICANN doesn't give IPs, IANA does. So PTIYPASI. HTH, HAND.
"The extensive mischief caused by Verisign's new attempts at 'service' have been well documented on Slashdot."
A sad day for justice will come when rantings of us lab monkeys will be used as evidence in court.
-Grump
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
Every industry has some form of governmental regulation (except for the drug trade). Pharmaceutical companies have the FDA, why can't we create an Internet Oversight Beauro?
Read journal when you are not understand
Since they've always handed me snags in dealing with them as a registrar.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Some responsibilities should NEVER be given to ANY corporations at all. Verisign nearly wreck the whole internet for us.
If you thought domain squatters buying mispelled domains and setting popup pages on it was bad... the days of typing lkwdlgkhlhkgwq.com and GETTING Sitefinder was much worse!
Thank God it was quite shortlived though.
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
If they get a court case going they have a decent chance of winning because....
.com domains so if one isn't bought they can theoritically do whatever they want with it .cc
They manage the
And because there are other extensions doing it such as
Evolution or ID?
Poor VeriSign! They can't hijack the internet anymore. :(
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Verisign, who jealously guard their monopoly on domains, suing ICANN for "Restraining competition"
Christ, the guy who cleared that lawsuit must have the hugest set of brass balls in existence
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
"Verisign sued ICANN for making them take down Sitefinder, but the judge said that their case was 'awfully vague.'"
Hey!, I'm in a smartass mood today, WTF is wrong with "awfully vague?" It seems to work for the DMCA and a lot of other bogus legislation.
Chuck
between Verisign redirecting people at the DNS level and Microsfot redirecting people at the Browser level with MSIE?
Either way you are getting advertizements or tainted search results, and it's annoying either way.
I guess since it's DNS level, no one can "opt out" by choosing another browser, but the average user dosen't know how to do that either...
-Wes
The US Department of Commerce specifically regulates what VeriSign can and can't do. For instance, they approve all new TLDs. Not sure how far their authority goes, but it seems to be pretty extensive.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
All of the defense's evidence is preceded by the phrase: 'I am not a lawyer.'
but just incase Yahoo gets slashdotted, there's always USA Today to hammer on next!
Hmmm.
The Internet Architecture Board has recently written a document (draft-iab-identities) which covers how DNS names are used as identities and why doing things like what verisign was trying to do is a bad thing. They don't outright specify this particular battle, but talk about it in a more generic sense.
The next site to slashdot will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and start slashdotting it early!
That so-called evidence is actually goatse. I request that remark be modded down.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
InnerWeb
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
I always got a kick from typing things like "verisignsucks.com" and "sitefinder_is_satans_spawn.com" into the browser and watching SiteFinder come up as a response when it was still active. I hope they analyze their logs and get the message, though I admit that's unlikely.
I know, I should get a life.
ICANN made an announcement about this in 2002, and the information on the mentioned domains were still invalid in late 2003. Most of the information was updated this year, maybe to prepare for this lawsuit (to have clean hands).
Verisign/Netsol should have had their accreditation status yanked last year!
Fight Spammers!
what do you do when your registrar won't respond via email, email is their only means of contact, and your domain is expired (in the 30-day grace period)? FWIW I would never recommend PlanetDomain as a registrar. It's unquestionably one of those "you get what you pay for" issues. Saved a few $$ on the registration, but now we're paying in other, more significant ways.
dammit, they're using the soviet offense.
In Soviet Russia, the monopoly sue you!
VeriSign controls the computers that contain the master list of domain name suffixes, such as ".com" and ".fr."
.fr ccTLD? Since when? I thought it was AFNIC (www.afnic.fr) whol looked after .fr?
Verisign controls
Tk
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
Maybe we ought to put all of Verisign's IP addresses in our block lists?
1. Unused domain space is just that: unused, and un-owned by anyone. It's unethical to take over IP space that is un-allocated.
2. Verisign is providing a service that is very specific; they should not be allowed to change the terms of the services they provide without having to put the whole TLD system back up for bid. Since they could use this to profit, all other root servers and other companies who want to compete for this should have a chance. This is the same situation NSI/Verisign found themselves in in the 1990s when they started (illegally) charging for domain registration. The company has a history of "changing the rules" and exploiting others.
3. Redirecting unused IP space is a huge logistical problem for other systems online; it interferes with all services including ftp and mail - not just the web.
4. It's a big security problem. Who knows where mail for misspelled domain names ends up going?
5. The Internet is an International medium. We don't need another arrogant move on the part of US corporate America to further piss off the rest of the world and show that the Americans are hypocritics interested in exploiting resouces they don't have a right to.
6. If Verisign re-implements their unethical scheme, thousands of systems will modify their DNS to work around it. This could potentially undermine the design of the network to be able to effeciently route around problems and possibly spawn rogue root servers that would be embraced by the ISP community at the expense of the network's flexibility.
if they pay for it like everybody's supposed to have to do. If Verisign wants to pay the domain registration fee for each domain that it wants and put up the same web page on them I say "Great!"
They'll probably have to sue ISC and these guys as well, since there are patches out there to keep Sitefinder out.
This sig no verb.
This is the judge we need for the SCO case. With someone like this, this farce could have been over by now.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Icann can always employ the Chewbacca defense :)
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
... of what court wants, the judge should have just given them a list of law firms they might have wanted to hire instead. Put some ADs there too.
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
...Screaming Lord Such
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
or is this also the site finder service in question.. when a end user visits http://é.com/ they will get a verisign page. Is this the service in question??
pretzel_logic
When NSI deployed that sitefinder thing 17 other TLDS were already doing what they did.
/. posts from around the time of ICANN's creatsion. "Seems dicey but it's worth a shot".
There are specifics in the ICANN/NSI agreement that says they will not apply rules unequally across all TLDS.
So, ICANN's choices were to tell all TLDS to stop it, or allow them all to.
Since ICANN has no signed agreements with other TLDS (they told them to go fuck themselves when icann asked) they couldn't do the former and didn't feel like doing the latter. So, ICANN went and violated it's own agreement.
Of course ICANN has a history of violating it's agreements and it's own bylaws the changing them after the fact so this is not really news. And it's not like that actually have any oversigher or elected board members from the internet community. So what in hell do you expect?
Look at
Always trust your gut feelings.
Need Mercedes parts ?
The NSF contracted 3 companies to run the RS, DS and IS fucntions of "the internic project" AT&T got DS, Government Solusions got RS, General Atomics tgot IS. GA failed miserably, and GS got RS. GS changed it's name to Network Solutions; remeber at the time it sold network software and the domreg stuff accounted for a truly miniscule portion of their revenue.
.edu and whose president was the first President of ICANN.
When Joshua Glasner (?) wrote that article in Wired it began the great domain goldrush, domregs went asymtotic; domreg latency went from 3 days to 11 weeks.
The NSF thought it was funding a service for US universities and R&D labs, that was their mandate. When it became clear it was now well beyond that it didn't feel like funding it any more and instruced the FNCAC to come up with a solution. The FNCAC recommended the NSF tell NSI to charge for domains, and a part of that fee was set aside fot the "intellectual infrasrtucture fund"; this was NSF staffer Don Mitchell's creation, an it's purpose was to "keep the IETF process pure" that is it was to be used as a source of grants for people/workshops etc, Don was concerned about the commercializatin of the IETF *process* not the IETF per se.
Somehow the US congress get wind of this and appropriated this and gave that $32M to the US Internet2 project, related to Educause who now run
Nice little ecosystem they have there.
People from all over the world paid into that fund and a corrupt bunch of fucks in the US stole it.
Don Mitchell said he'd resign if his fund got raped. Don no longer works for the NSF. It's good to know there's at least one ethical guy in DC, or rather, used to be in DC.
Need Mercedes parts ?
First of all the size of the internet when this all came to a head in 1996/7 wasn't THAT big, and the size had nothing to do with Jon's problems; his problem was IANA had no legal personality; it did not exist in any legal sense, so, Jon, and not "IANA" or USC/ISI would have been the target of any lawsuits. USC was too chickenshit to give him any legal support and Don Heath of ISOC promised him a solution to this whuch begat the ill fated IAHC whaich begat ICANN. Same thing, same people just more cluelessness and greater corruption.
As for NSI's influence over ICANN structure that is simply patently untrue; you can check the records going back as far as the IFWP meetings; NSI wanted a simple "every pays $5 or $10 membership to "newco" and gets to vote on a small baord". To suggest they had anything to do with the behemoth of an org chart that is the moden ICANN is utter nonsese.
If you have proof of this I'd love to see it, if not it should be presented as your opnion, not as a fact.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Beacuse I'm lazy and stupid. Of course the s should not be capitalized.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Why is the USG in charge of all DNS? Because you agree to it. Your use of the USG funded root servers gaurentees you will forever be a slave to whatever ICANN and the USG think you should have for domain names. For exercise, follow the money; it always leads back to some organization that starts with a capital I; they're all part of what is cynicallly referred to as the I* MLM.
You can slag alterative roots all you want, but now that they've been running for 8 years, in daily use by a very large number of people, you have ansolutely no technical basis in fact to complain; I will debate this with you any place, any time for as long as you want on their technical merits, which the astute reader will note ICANN has never allowed to happen. "They're just evil, the IAB says so, keep paying is please and thank you". ICANN can not afford to have this happen as they lose their control, their funding, and their first class once-per-querter jaunts around the gloce to ignore te Internet community.
Remember, the first order of business of any organization is to survive and at the end of he day ICANN could give a shit about the internet, they care if they're still around in a year. Never confuse the two.
You are simply
wrong about alternative roots and the FUD published by the IAB notwithstading, you are simply echoing silly comments about something you've never used.
"I don't like asparagus, I've never tried it but I know I don't like it".
Yeah, riiiiiight.
Look at the organizations that insist the ONE TRUE ROOT is all you should ever use: ISC, IANA, ICANN, IETF, IAB and so on and so forth. So to ask why the USG has control over his is truly idiotic. It's because you and your ilk insist agaist all reason that the USG plan must be followed and keep those cards, letters and checks coming, folks!
Bah.
Need Mercedes parts ?
You're slipping Keith, Randy Bush usualy refers to me as a "dangerous psychopath", Paul Vixie refers to me as a "misguided lunatic" and never mind the fact that Vixies boss who funded the $2M of DEC's money for development of BIND is behind all that I do in this arena, as a follow on act to his creating of the back-then wildly unpopular alt newsgroups (which Vixie prediced would be the death of usenet.
Who exactly are you referring to as "paranoid lunatics" Keith?
The obvious technical argument to your first paragraph is to self-primary the root and do away with any reliance on the legacy root servers or NSI's operation of them.
Non-legacy tlds aside, anybody that uses the legacy root servers is not going to get as fast or reliable nameservice than if they do it for themselves.
This would be the first step to wean yourselves away from the tit of the US Government controlled DNS. If you used ORSC dns that would be nice, but you don't have to, you can use the legacy root.
ftp://internic.net/domain/root.zone.gz still works if your favorite flavour is vanilla.
ftp://rz.vrx.net/db.root also works if you like other flavours.
Cordially,
Richard Sexton
Need Mercedes parts ?
As for NSI, there's a difference between what NSI said in public and what they told their lobbyists to push for in private. Of course they weren't about to agree to a structure that would have allowed ICANN or whatever to take away their cash cow.
One of the nice things about the ICANN meetings is you get to see where the real stuff happens - in the hallways, in the bars after hours etc. I met and stayed near NSI's lobbyist there and made sure I could eavesdrop. Their position was consistant Keith. If you have anythuing other than heresay evidence to the contrary I'd love to hear it.
It was also possible to sit on on the closed door GAC meetings in Berlin at the creation of the DNSO by virtue of the fact the upstiars gallery doors of the Hotel Adlon were not locked or guarded. The I* people and notably Cerf all but encouraged the GAC as part of some sordid quid pro quo; NSI and the Interent community at large was dead set against them. The "Cerf good NSI bad" idea simply does not hold water when held up to scrutiny.
If you care to poke around the Berkman archives you'll find me on Saturday after noon calling for a quick straw vote to see hoe many people thin the GAC is neccessary. 13 out of 200 said yes, bu this was stricken bery quickly by a nervous Paul Twomey (nor president or CEO or someghing of ICANN) saying "It's best to not interfere with these things" or words to that effect.
Suuuure, not THIS is an organization that measure s "community consensus".
There seems to be a common fault among the grays that NSI can do no good. These serves nobody well; judge what an organization actually does piece by piece without prejudice; prejudice apparantly blinds people.
If you think the DNS was ever not under US government aegis you're dead wrong. Vixie had his chance to throw the tea in the harbour and blew it by doing it two years too late.
Sorry, but the grays screwed this all up; Jon was a swell guy and all and I liked him a lot but this did happen on his watch and his ilk has handed all this to the USG on a silver platter out of vested self interest, guised as "for the good of the community".
Need Mercedes parts ?
Managing registries of names and numbers isn't something that requires "international registration" or "governance" or any of that sort of thing, though at some point the problem would have probably scaled beyond Jon's ability to do it by hand and he'd have needed to get some extra funding for a couple of PCs to run a shell script and a web interface.
Creating and resolving disputes about trademarks and imagined business names, on the other hand, requires enough more people that it's a big enough operation to want to build a funding model that can support a bunch of policy wonks and trademark lawyers in the style to which they're accustomed, and once you're doing that you need to create artificial scarcities so you can charge money for things that don't really cost much so you can fund yourself. It also takes a lot of work to prevent internet folks from going out and building and deploying cool things that'll mess with your operation, which was a problem Jon didn't have.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks