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DNS Stressed From Financial Maneuverings
jcatcw writes "The Domain Name System is showing signs of being out of control. Automated software systems are being used to re-register large batches of expired domain names. In addition, speculators are using a loophole in the registration process that lets domains be tested for their potential profitability as pay-per-click advertising sites during a free five-day "tasting" period."
Can someone explain to me why this is even news? Seems to me the domain name system has been out of control for years, this is nothing new.
This actually just happened to my organization two weeks ago. A .com version of one of the .org names we hold was expiring, and we did the backorder thing with Godaddy to try to acquire it since there's really no other way to even have a remote chance at an expiring name.
We got a notice that the name was re registered within a few seconds of its release, and Godaddy had not acquired it on our behalf. The backorder thing also came with monitoring service that notifies us of any changes to the domain's whois.
Three days later, I received a notification that the domain's whois had changed again. I figured the new owners were setting it up for their use, but instead it was changed to my info. We suddenly had the name in our account.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
Here is a slick, free typosquatting search tool that lets you find and explore the kind of problematic domains mentioned in the article. Try playing with the various search options - it's addictive. For instance, there are 141 registered domains that contain the word "slashdot", and 199 more that are a one-character misspelling of "slashdot". That's within just 4 TLDs.
The firm also offers a novel service that allows companies to recover lost traffic without necessarily filing lots of lawsuits.
Full disclosure - I am CitizenHawk's president. That being said, I can say we are intimately involved in tracking DNS updates daily - and I agree. Tasting is a serious problem that threatens to push the DNS system beyond its limits.
This article seems not to understand that the DNS system and the Registar system are completely separate entities.. The mass registrations are done through the various registrars for .com, .net, .info, etc., with current estimates that there are are about 5 million domains being "tasted" at any given time. This number is fairly constant so it's not producing spikes or a significant increase in DNS usage at any one time.
And I completely disagree with it.
If you want to test the domain, then LEASE the domain name. None of this automated click-count crap for free while other people who would USE the domain name wait to see if it will ever be available.
In popular parlance, DNS is the Domain Name SERVICE, which is fine. The Domain Name SYSTEM is breaking down due to communication problems between or within registrars. Nothing to do with the root servers.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
What if they applied the same rules to domains as RIPE uses to give out IP adresses. Basicly the first batch is given out no questions asked. After that you can still get extra ones as long as you can prove you use them for a legitimate reason.
Sure it might sound restrictive, but with bots drop catching domains with brute forcing techniques it could weed out the worst of abuse.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
The method for squashing "name tasting" (the expoitation of the five-day grace period) is well known: impose a small fee for each returned domain. The Public Interest Registry (maintainer of .org) recently became the first registry to impose such a fee of 5 cents per name. VeriSign has not followed suit. Some argue that this is because enough "tasted" domains are registered that the sales benefit from the practice outweighs the stress on the infrastructure. ICANN is requesting a position paper from a coalition of registrars on the topic.
RichM
Data Center Knowledge
The problem is with the ICANN - they're mainly collecting money and doing nothing really good for the long term (they approve TLDs that are just "yet another .com"s - see any significant innovations/improvements?). A single Jon Postel could replace the entire ICANN and the world would probably be better for it.
The bigger problem is everyone currently lining up to replace ICANN is probably worse than the ICANN.
Financial maneuvering? Add political maneuvering.
Fix #1: Eliminate the free tasting period.
....
If you register fo0.com on May 1 and on May 2 you realize you goof and you meant to register foo.com, fine. But your registration still expires next May 1. In addition, you only get 1 or 2 "free goofs" after which you pay a paperwork fee, maybe a few pennies or less, to cover the actual costs of changing things around.
The people who run DNS should neither gain nor lose if I register 1 name for 1 year vs. I register 100 names for short consecutive periods that add up to 1 year. Currently they lose big time.
Fix #2: Meaningful domain-lapse rules
In general, if a domain is revoked or lapses, nobody except you should be able to claim it without your permission for a certain period of time. I'd suggest a minimum of 30 days.
I theory this is the way it was supposed to work but in practice
Obviously there will be special cases, such as names transferred by court order.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
(posting anon because I used mod points)
Who does the testing period benefit besides spammers and squatters? Does someone who legitimately want to use a domain name "test" it for five days... and then what? Of course someone who wants to the domain is going to keep it. But if you don't want it, why did you register it, unless of course you were testing it for how many people accidentally typed your domain name, and then we come back to the spammers and squatters. I'd be interested in knowing a legitimate purpose for this five day testing period.
Suppose I run davidwristhegreatest.com. Suppose a few links exist on the web and I get a handful of hits a day from people clicking on those links.
Now I get tired of being vain so I let the domain expire.
Someone tastes the domain and their ads get viewed by 3-4 people a day.
That's a few thousand people a year.
Pretty soon that adds up to real money.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Jason H. Fisher, an attorney at Los Angeles law firm Buchalter Nemer Fields & Younger, said the biggest obstacles to fixing the Domain Name System are its international nature and the reluctance of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to take action. Fisher said ICANN "would rather do nothing than make waves."
If ICANN doesn't take action, who will? Who can?
Fizz
I don't have the link handy, but I recall reading about one of the other TLD managers implementing a maximum return ratio before they stop refunding the fee. Something like 10% or so.
- MayKiting.html
FWIW, the Godaddy.com CEO has blogged about this topic a few times, the numbers are staggering.
http://www.bobparsons.com/index.php?/archives/118
Just don't allow it. There's no possible positive in even allowing cyberquating. If someone wants to register a website that looks like a cybersquat, attach a clause saying they have x amount of days to put up an actual website, assuming there is a port 80 attached to that domain. Or can the registrars not stay away from the easy money themselves?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
It's worse than that. And it's all ICANN's fault.
ICANN has become a trade association for domain registrars. Which isn't surprising; they're the ones that pay it money.
A big problem is that registrars are allowed to speculate in domain names. ICANN has the power to prohibit this (see section 4.2 of the Registrar Agreement) but has not done so. To speculate in domain names, it helps to be a registrar, which isn't that expensive. ICANN's pricing starts at $4000/year. As a result, there are now about 800 "registrars", most of which are fronts for domain speculators. Most of them don't register domains for others at all.
As a result, ICANN's constituency is now composed primarily of typosquatting slimeballs. That's why we're in this mess.
It shouldn't be that hard to setup something simpler than the current mess. For example, mycompany.com might point to DNS squatters in the ICANN domain, but to an actual "mycompany" in the "new" domain. The new domain would feature low registration fees to those willing to put up a real website. Perhaps something like torrents could be used to spread the DNS updates to eliminate control by evil entities.
Since normal DNS servers would get ICANN entries, non-evil people can point to port 53 to use non-evil DNS servers (primary/secondary, perhaps using an evil ICANN-based DNS server as a tertiary fallback).
Search engines could choose to return an IP-based page hit for a non-ICANN "mycompany.com" search.
We could eliminate the ability of evil entities being able to "take down" a site using DNS measures (i.e Thailand, GWB, China, etc.).
Is it possible to get flat-text lists of the domain names registered? There have been times when I've wanted to grep for domains in the big 3 TLD name space. Does any entity on the net provide simple, *free*, public archives of the various TLDs?
Method of processing duck feet
I think one way to fix this is to devalue the main gTLDs. Right now there are very few gTLDs that anyone can register for any purpose. I think we need A LOT more gTLDs and train the public further that everything isn't '.com'. This will devalue the existing .com domains that people are squatting. Example gTLDs that I think should have open registration: .global .earth .tech .www .files
.godaddy, .verisign, .linux, .microsoft, .???.
.com collection a lot less valuable. This isn't real-estate. It is virtual. When you run out of land on the Internet you just make more land! Well, that will be easier with IPv6, but you get the point. I think the reason why these tactics are occurring is due to the perceived limitation of the .com space. So what, who cares, just make more gTLDs.
So on and so forth. And if you act now, for only $100,000 you can register a custom non-reserved gTLD for your own purpose (subject to approval, id check, no squatters, etc.):
This will make that $40,000
Actually, there's an even more simple way to totally eliminate domain squatting and domain speculation.
It's just politically unacceptable to the people who have a religious belief in free market capitalism, and who can never admit that it's what's causing the problems with DNS.
It's this: Make domain name registrations non-transferable.
Think about it. You don't get rampant speculation in phone numbers. You don't find it impossible to get a new phone number because none are available. You don't have to pay $5k to a speculator to get a phone number in your desired area code. Why? Because you can't sell your phone number to someone else on eBay, and you can't keep phone numbers you aren't using for a trivial cost. If you *could* do those things, numbers like mine (which by chance ends in "00") would fetch serious money.
If Joe Slimeball couldn't sell the cooldomain.com he wasn't using and had no plans to use, he wouldn't spend $30 a year to keep it.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Who determines if something is an "actual website"? Being of a (mildly) technical bent, I would say that any document, even a zero byte index.html, that is coughed up by some variety of server software if presented with an HTTP request - that is an actual website. But we all know that this would not be the interpretation placed on "actual website" if this wording actually became part of the rules.
As far as so called "domain tasting" goes, I prefer Bob Parsons' term "domain kiting" with all the same negative connotations associated with terms like "cheque kiting" (Bob Parsons is the founder/CEO of GoDaddy.com). To make it worse, domain kiting used to be available only to those with a large financial base to work with - generally in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. But now, a few registrars (DynaDot comes to mind) have lowered the bar for entry so that people with as little as $500 can now engage in domain kiting. It is no wonder that it is so frustrating for new businesses to get online with a decent domain - we are seeing many many more domains such as "davestorontogardencentre.com" because better domains such as "davesgardens.com", "davesnursery.com" etc. are almost all owned by speculators.
My point is that the system is failing miserably, although most head-up-the-ass promoters of "unrestricted capitalism" probably haven't figured it out yet so the social unrest which is on its way will be a real surprise to them.
Probably because they think of watching 24/7 "news" of Paris Hilton while cherishing their ability to buy truckloads of useless plastic crap from China for their "interest-only" financed 6000 sqft paper and sticks house, while having no savings and a negative net worth in general as "success".
Communism is alive and well in many places where it was always alive and well: Quaker and Mennonite communes. Oh you meant the State Capitalism / Totalitarian Governance combo which the Soviet Union practiced? That one croaked indeed. But not because because it could not out way desire for "extraordinary success". One set of supreme jerks simply lost to another set of supreme jerks. Oligarchs replaced Politburo appointees and then got replaced by ex-KGB "businessmen" who conduct business via 9mm pistol rounds.
I have news for you: the governing principle of our supposed Capitalist society, the very reason it appears acceptable for the general populace, is that one's wealth is supposed to be proportional to one's merit to society. You break that rule badly enough, long enough and you will end up with Feudalism, Corporatism or some other Fascist abomination.
No I am "shooting" for proportionality of reward to merit. That is all.
No man or woman is 1000 times (or more) "smarter" then even the dumbest of janitors. No fashion model is more meritous then a productive cancer researcher or an accomplished researcher in quantuum physics. No CEO is worth 400 times the average worker in salary and 1000 times in bonuses when the very company he is heading is going bankrupt. No trust fund kid is "better" then that of a minimum-wage diner waitress just because he inhereited $2 billion from papa. And so on.
I sold my domain name for $10,000 a couple of months ago. No regrets at all. But what I can't figure out, looking at what the guy who bought it used it for, why it was worth that much to him. All it is now, is a page with links, mostly to things I used to host on my site for my own purposes. Just seems weird.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
--
Keep your domain ides safe from squatters.
Presumably the process works like this:
1) Register to trial a domain
2) Wait a few days and count the hits
3) If it didn't get the required number of hits then drop it, otherwise pony up to keep the domain.
If there is some way that I can get a feed of each of the 35 million new names each month, then i can have a script simply wget a couple of pages off each site from each of a few IP addresses.
That way they'll think they've hit paydirt, pay to keep the domain and suddenly realise that it doesn't get any hits.
I would imagine that automated counter-measures could really screw with their cost benifit analysis.
Damn, it is so "cool" see such insightful post on Slashdot. What we lack in virtual internet world - even here - is descent criticism of Capitalism just because if you are against it, you are probably hippy/anarchy lover/communist/peace of croak. Which actually shows that people are not ready to discuss many things, if they are connected with even small slice of disappointment or embarrassment (such that Communism was used as ideology to create and rule Soviet Union).
About proportionality you are talking about - well, problem is that people are people. Capitalism more or less is off-spring of Feodalism, so it simply slips back now. In my really humble opinion, people, left unchecked, will fuck up any system meant for common good. Why? Because of survival instincts. Like it or not, more money, more power is more chance for survival to most of the people. So they thrive for it. Why most people who are happy in marriage/with another significant one mostly don't care about these two things too much? Because they see their - or more concretely, survival of their species - in their family, children, etc. Yes, they need money too, but usually they have enough.
IMHO, behind all those greedy, power hungry bastards, system gamers you could see people which just have been very unlucky in their conquest of founding of their future and "survival" - happy family and children.
One big speculation, but those are my thoughts.
p.s. My biggest problem with modern world is that we keep telling "alternative truth" about it. We just close our eyes and keep saying what we want to hear. Not truth. We don't like admit that we are a little bit...savages.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
The problem, which you obviously have missed from my previous post, is that there appears to be no relationship between the transferring and the "capability".
This of course is one of the funnier non-sequiturs. An ultimately "productive" worker is one which operates fully-automated, 100% efficient factory which employs exactly zero other employees. Furthermore, an ultimately efficient enterprise (owned by that last Capitalist who now nears 99% of ownership of everything if current trends continue) would promptly fire that last worker and replace him with more automation. Ponder that when you espouse virtues of "productivity" and "efficiency".
The point of societies is not efficiency. It is happiness of its members. There is no race to be won by being more "efficient" then the some other lifeform on Pluto. But our lives are short and filled with problems and pain in no small part because of the fact that some people managed to pervert the society to put precedence of "efficiency" ahead of well being of the majority of its members for the sake of stroking egos and enriching very few of them.
That green little man on Pluto must be getting ahead because you are concerned about how fast we "grow" our output of plastic lawn chairs from China and other worthless crap, while creating completely unsustainable energy and environmental (not to mention social and financial) nightmare so that we can outpace his "growth". Why else would you and the other nutcases be concerned with increasing the growth rate as opposed to general well being of individuals? USA is "growing" faster then Europe and yet there are 40 million medically uninsured people here to ... zero in Europe or Canada. What the fuck is the point of all this growth then?!!