Slashdot Mirror
Verisign To Sell DNS Root Server Lookup Data?
An anonymous reader writes "According to an editorial at Domain Name News, Verisign is considering selling partial access to DNS root server lookup data. The data would be made available to registrars, who in turn could use it for 'traffic-tasting' non-existent domains entered by any internet user. This would give them a better idea about what bogus domains to put up sites on to capture eyeballs." Haven't seen this story elsewhere and it's based on an anonymous source; YMMV.
Yeah, except the data could probably be used by typosquatters to... optimize their activities. Anything that helps typosquatters is a bad thing in my opinion.
I check what domains are free by using dig and then looking for NXDOMAIN. This helps to get around any registrar looking at their logs to see what domains people have looked up as free. (I use my own dns server so the queries go to the root servers first)
I am sick of sites being taken by domain squatters.
I thought I had a great thing with dig (or nslookup) but that might end if that data is going to be sold too. So then what's the point.
Some data shouldn't be sold.
This is basically done already. Squatters can buy a domain, and due to the rules that ICANN setup (I think it's ICANN), they can return the domain for free within something like five days. During those five days, they put up a squatting page and keep track of all the hits their site gets, if it gets X number of hits, they keep the domain, otherwise they drop it. All for free.
I recently did a search for a domain on GoDaddy, the domain was available. Three days later when I went to buy it, it was not available and had been recently bought by a squatter or reseller or something. This is a whole different problem altogether and another flaw in the system. Anyways, I made it a point not to go to that site to make sure I didn't give them any hits that would encourage them to keep it.
Either way, I just bought another available domain and use that. Can't be too picky these days.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
Changing your dns servers to point to the opendns servers will fix many of the typosquatting problems people have:
http://www.opendns.com/
Best of all, it is free.
Does anyone actually buy anything from those bogus domains, or are they all making their money by what is essentially click fraud? Most of them seem to just deliver ads from the usual ad services.
We've been demoing our filter for bogus on-line businesses, SiteTruth, for a while now. Remember "on the Internet, no one knows if you're a dog?" SiteTruth can usually kick the dogs out.
The basic concept is to try to find the business behind the domain. If the web site isn't selling anything and isn't running ads, it's not rated. If it's selling something, there needs to be a business address on the site, preferably one that matches up with business records. So we look through the site for addresses, check SSL certs, look at business directories, do some crunching, and come up with a rating automatically. This is effective against link farms, spam blogs, landing pages, and most of the other trash on the Web.
We use the ratings to reorder search results. We don't block suspicious sites; they just move down in search results. It's a clue stick to apply to suspicious sites - be clear about who's behind the site, or be ignored.
This is an alpha test demo, set up as a search engine web site. The real version will be a browser plug-in. Meanwhile, feel free to try out SiteTruth and complain where appropriate; that's why we're in test. There's a link to the SiteTruth blog on the site if you want to comment. The most interesting searches to try are for heavily spammed keywords, like "herbal viagra" or "london hotels". If your own domains get low ratings, click on the rating icons to find out why. If you're legit, it's usually because the web site has some easy to fix problem.
We've been hearing some grumbling from a few domain owners about this, which indicates we're on the right track. They usually have some long, whiny explanation of why they shouldn't have to disclose the address of their "online business". Tough.
This sort of speculation is not a new phenomenon. It's been true for centuries in real estate: you buy some property not because it's useful to you, but just to charge whomever it is useful to a hefty price. At some level, this is just an inevitable feature of an open market, and must be tolerated (unless you lack a brain and like the idea of some Big Brother Tsar handing out domain names to whomever "deserves" them most).
But real estate speculation also provides an interesting possible solution: real estate taxes. Since real estate taxes are usually some percentage of the market value, they become very high on property that has a high market value -- so high that you can't afford them unless you are using the property to generate the maximum possible income. Speculators tend to be squeezed out of the market, since they can't afford the taxes required to "park" the property until the price is bid up high enough to suit their taste. So, one solution is to tax internet domains, with the tax reflecting the market value of the domain. That would certainly cut down on speculation, but, like all asset taxes, it's bound to depress creativity and economic growth.
Another solution comes from compulsory licenses in patent law, where the idea is that if you patent an invention and then fail to work the patent, or license it on reasonable terms -- where, alas, a court has to interpret what "reasonable" means -- then other folks can just use your patent without coming to any licensing agreement with you. I suppose the equivalent here would be that if you sit on a domain and don't use it yourself and won't sell it at a "reasonable" cost, then DNS service would be switchable to someone who will use it, even if you don't agree. I suspect this is most likely to become widespread, and I think it's already happening to some extent.
Finally, the classic libertarian idea would be to break the concept that there must be a single, worldwide, one-to-one mapping between DNS name and IP address, i.e. more or less abandon the idea of domain name registration entirely. In this strange anarchic world, you, an aspiring domain-name user, would simply start using the domain name and publish your associated IP address on some DNS server. Presumably you'd have to pay, at first, to get some servers to list your IP address.
But if your particular IP becomes the preferred association with that domain name, something the market would quickly decide, then it becomes advantageous for more and more DNS servers e.g. run by ISPs to list your IP address block for the domain name without charging you. Indeed, you might be able to charge them at some point for the privilege. To some extent this model already exists in the world of business-speak, which is why a Mac is not a "PC," even though "PC" stands for "personal computer." IBM's product named "PC" so dominated the 80s market for microcomputers that it became impossible to say "PC" without meaning "IBM-compatible microcomputer." Good thing IBM was not able to file for trademark protection on the phrase "personal computer" . . .
Of course, the fact that trademark law exists at all says that the completely free-market solution is not likely to work. Still, it would be interesting to develop some system where the preference of the global market of users has influence on who "owns" a particular domain name. The present gold-rush first come first served system has obvious disadvantages, and little other than simplicity to recommend it.