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A Snag For Verisign's Suit Against ICANN

Posted by timothy on from the they-cann't dept.

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.

15 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. Acronyms for all! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny


    IANAL but ICANN doesn't give IPs, IANA does. So PTIYPASI. HTH, HAND.

  2. A sad day for justice... by ForestGrump · · Score: 5, Funny

    "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.
    1. Re:A sad day for justice... by elwell642 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Your Honor, I present Exhibit A, a posting from "Anonymous Coward." Here he asserts that he is an expert in the realm of internet policy, and that the following facts are indeed true...

      And here we have Exhibit B, the log file from the IRC chatroom #death2SCO...

      --

      <insert witty linux comment here>

  3. Arghh... Sitefinder by MoThugz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:Arghh... Sitefinder by DoorFrame · · Score: 5, Funny

      Don't worry, I just bought lkwdlgkhlhkgwq.com and I'm going to mirror the old sitefinder page. Just as a service to those who were missing it.

      --

      --
      RumorsDaily
  4. Re:Who regulates them? by gclef · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Sadly, that *is* ICANN. At least, they think so. Their original mandate was to handle the Name and Number (IP) allocations (hence the two N's in their acronym). It's grown a bit, though, as the ICANN board has pushed the bounds of their mandate.

  5. US Dept. of Commerce by gorzek · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

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  6. Re:What's the difference... by Short+Circuit · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's only true for HTTP traffic. Generating false domain names broke a lot of other services. Like checking to see if a domain existed before accepting an email address as "From" that domain.

    --
    tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
  7. Re:Who regulates them? by Guildencrantz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The problem for this is that the question comes down to whos government? The internet is an entity that extends well beyond typical political borders. ICANN (Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers) is supposed to be an international organization to take care of the peculiarities of how addresses will be assigned within this lawless realm.

    ~~Guildencrantz

    --

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  8. Objection, your honor! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    All of the defense's evidence is preceded by the phrase: 'I am not a lawyer.'

  9. Re:What's the difference... by damgx · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The internet is more then just http (webbrowsing).

    This mess up ftp, smtp nntp and other protocols as well.

    Also why should Verisign have the right to steal page view from Microsoft? (or another browser og website).

    --
    I only read slash. for the articles...
  10. Re:Who regulates them? by kunudo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I, being european, would be pissed about that. Especially after stuff like this. I wouldn't want an extension of the US. govt to have even more power over the web than it has today. I suppose we could just roll our own web, I mean, the rest of the world, but that would be kinda dumb...

  11. Re:What's the difference... by therblig · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The difference is that people don't have to choose MSIE to be their browser. I can surf the web with Firefox, but I cannot choose whether I interact with Verisign. That's a monopoly I cannot get around.

    As others have also already mentioned, it messes up far more than just web traffic. It has wreaked havoc with many anti-spam solutions. Of course, in Verisign's case (remember their annoying pop-ups), they and the spammers may be more birds of a feather than they care to admit.

    --

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  12. Maybe ICANN should execute their powers... by innerweb · · Score: 5, Interesting
    ...And find a company to replace Verisign for Verisign's responsibilities. That might send a clear message...

    InnerWeb

    --
    Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
    1. Re:Maybe ICANN should execute their powers... by kalislashdot · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Exactly. I am confused by all this. I remember back in the day the NSF ran the Internet. They contracted an outside vendor, Network Solutions, to run the database of somina names. Very common practice for goverment stuff.

      Later ICANN was created to take over the Internet from NSF. Versign bought Network Solutions. Differnt people, same situation. ICANN runs the Internet and contracts out to Verisign to run the database. I figure somewhere they is a contract that says what they can and cannot do.

      ICANN needs to actually do something like revoke Verisigns contract. Get a new company and say "we want XYZ, nothing more nothing less" "for your trouble you can charge what ever you want for people to register domain names".

      Plain and simple, I just don't get it.