Some DNS Requests Ruled Illegal in North Dakota

jgreco writes "A judge in North Dakota has just ruled that requesting a zone transfer from a public DNS server is criminal activity within the meaning of the North Dakota Computer Crimes Law. A zone transfer is a simple request that a DNS server hand over information in bulk, and a DNS server may be configured to allow or deny such requests. That the owner of a DNS server would configure the server to allow such requests, and then claim such requests were unauthorized, is simply stunning."

Comments

Re:DNS illegal now? Read again.

[tgd]

See this is why we need a (-1 Informative) moderation... because clearly from the tone of the post and the the majority of the replies, rational response is not the goal of this story submission.

Re:consequence of bad computer crime laws

[morgan_greywolf]

It IS completely ridiculous. I doubt very much that OSDN or SourceForge (or whatever they're called this week) wants to have to give explicit permission to each and every user on Slashdot, but that's what it appears to have come to because judges are techno-illiterates.

If a service is running on a machine connected to the Internet and that service is obviously not secured, then the only thing that can be assumed is that permission to use that service is implicitly granted, especially in absence of notices stating otherwise.

IOW, if you run a Web server on port 80 and require no authentication, then it can be easily assumed that you intend to publish any materials served via the Web server to the public Internet -- you expect people to access it.

Ditto if you run a DNS service that allows zone transfers to all comers -- you expect that DNS zone transfer will occur and no one will need permission from you to do so.

To rule otherwise is nothing but pure stupidity.

Re:Why am I not suprised?

[plover]

That's not at all true. The judges I've had dealings with have been damn smart people.

What you're forgetting is that in most court cases, the defendant is there for one of two possible reasons: they really weren't responsible, or they were responsible but are now lying about it. And the plaintiff or complainant is there to make sure something "legal" happens in their favor, and they're not above lying to get their desired outcome, either. Usually there's a lot of both. That means the judges are professionally sitting at the mouth of a never ending river of bullshit, and they have to keep control of the situation.

It's not that judges can't or refuse to understand the technology; it's that the cases are about the people, which is where their focus must remain. The computer didn't act of its own accord. It operated under the direction of its owner. The question of "was there malicious intent?" has nothing to do with DNS or any other logic-based technology and everything to do with the two guys standing in the courtroom.

Re:Unbelievable

[MyLongNickName]

What is more unbelievable is that you'd take an article summary like this as being the gospel. More often than not, it is someone who hasn't really read the whole article, but wants to see his name on the front page of Slashdot. Dispense with a few facts, create some sensationalism, and the crack Slashdot editing team puts it up without fact checking.