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VeriSign Granted a Patent Covering SiteFinder
An anonymous reader writes "Remember VeriSign's SiteFinder? Turns out that a couple of months back VeriSign was granted a patent on resolving unregistered domains. This came about thanks to its acquisition of eNic, operator of the .CC Domain. How long before Verizon, Earthlink, and OpenDNS are hit up for licensing fees?"
Original discussion
I'm guessing combine this with apache and they'll catalog your web site without you having to pay for a registered domain.
America is a bad place to do business in
unless you like walking over (patent/legal) minefields
It will dissuade ISPs from implementing SiteFinder-like DNS abuses.
Maybe we should patent REALLY BAD IDEAS to prevent them from spreading. Of course, it's hard to imagine in advance that ISPs and a company like VeriSign would make a business from poisoning and subverting DNS.
Flash Wars: Adobe in the History and Future of Flash
If it stops DNS providers from using this practice... I'm all for it.
yvan eht nioj
i start to use SSL certs other than verisign, and advise my clients to do as such too, and you all do that too, and with that reaction shove that patent up verisign's butt ?
Read radical news here
Didn't the patent on being an asshole expire a long time ago?
Hopefully Verisign will use this patent to bludgeon this abominable practise to death at ISPs and OpenDNS.
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
Imagine verisign charging an absolutely absurd amount for their licensing. I mean totally out of line, like $1M/month. Don't want to pay licensing? Don't infringe.
That would dramatically reduce the amount of this DNS perversion going on.
Not that this is going to happen, but it's an interesting prospect to think about. Heaven forbid the system be taken advantage of to the benefit of the people.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
A better question: It is not how long before other big companies are hit up to also pay to play in models that broadly fuck over everyone else in accessing information - but rather: How long before enough people have had enough of absurd business practices and start taking action directly and personally against the executives who profit from these asshole business maneuvers like SiteFinder? Yes, find them and dump them in a ditch. Like so many other places in western society now, the mentality driving practices like this comes directly from the top of the government and business administrations: "Who's gunna stop me, huh?" Well, until people start stepping up and saying, "I will", and taking personal action to do so, large businesses and governments will continue to take as much as they can.
My ISP has recently joined the ranks of retards who return an incorrect result when a domain is not found. I've been looking around but it's unclear who is out there running DNS that I am welcome to use, that is worth using, and that is likely to be at the same IP for a long time. Whose servers should I use?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If they make it something reasonable, they get to collect license fees. Money for no work. If they use your idea they get nothing except respect from the community.
I know which one they're going to pick.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
FYI - Cavalier Telephone does this too. I called them about it and they suggested tat I use someone else's DNS servers. Unfortunately, the only alternative I have is Comcast. :( Yay for competition, huh?
Another reason this patent shouldn't have been accepted is that wildcard domains were a standard capability, and having a web server try to provide useful information in a 404 page was probably a known capability, or at least obvious to someone skilled in the trade. Responding to a DNS request with the IP address of a web server that isn't the one the customer was looking for might not count as "obvious to someone skilled in the trade" because it's obviously wrong.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
road runner internet does this too now.
I wonder if it's possible to sue anyone who practices this patent for fraud?
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/050508R.shtml
'''
The Federal Communications Commission has recently encountered mounting scrutiny in response to its broad deregulatory practices. Public frustration regarding the FCC has peaked at a time of fierce debate on net neutrality.
In a memo obtained Tuesday by The Washington Post, 30 current and former commission employees complained about the leadership of FCC Chairman Kevin Martin.
Staff members observed that "the FCC process appears broken and most of the blame appears to rest with Chairman Martin."
The memo, written to chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee John Dingell and chairman of the House Energy Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Bart Stupak, increases pressure on the FCC chairman, who, in particular, has been accused of a rigidly anti-regulatory, pro-corporate approach. Many critics assert that his approach has contributed to a lack of oversight over network providers.
'''
What's a little deregulation between friends, right?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
but assholes keep extending it.
Seriously... that is probably the dumbest advice you can give.
Here in their own words:
"OpenDNS protects millions of people a day across hundreds of thousands of schools, businesses and homes. We BLOCK phishing sites, give you the power to FILTER out adult sites and proxies among more than 50 categories, and provide the precision to BLOCK individual domains."
Aside from all the obvious issues already discussed on the previous thread, can Verisign be held accountable if any royalty paying users of SiteFinder are sued for copyright infringement issues? Or maybe conspiracy or collusion?
I sincerely hope they sue Earthlink, because maybe then Earthlink will stop the stupid practice of NOT returning a failure when the domain is not found.
:o(
It is getting ever more difficult to find DNS that just works as it should, instead of coming up with a result for every request, even if it has to make one up.
*mutter* *mutter* *mutter*
Tomas
This is a patent I approve of: the more companies have to pay for it, the less it will get used.
Love it or hate it it's irrelevant. eNic was not the first registrar that did this. There is definately prior art that will make this patent invalid. I'm still investigating dates, but the ccTld i'm thinking of didn't do it for advertising, just a redirect to a domain doesn't exist. If anyone knows the original post the link and date.
Wildcarding domains is a very old, in Net terms, practice. All you have to do to have it work at the registry level is to wildcard the top level. It's a trivial one line per top-level domain for which you want to do this in BIND. There's nothing novel or even particularly interesting about it.
How the hell can companies patent these obvious uses of existing processes?
Wonder who is going to be the first to patent 404's and redirects and other the other obvious fuckin' functions because they were first to put the words "A process for" in front of them.
Not really that unbelievable when you read about how many of the patent board members were unconstitutional appointed to their position.
But then again what else is new in that festering swamp water yaw'l refer to as the American political system!
http://tinydns.org/djbdns-1.05-ignoreip2.patch
Turns A records for certain IP addresses back into NXDOMAIN results.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Why should we care? Many wireless "routers" made for home use have dns servers on them, and im sure most /.'ers run their own DNS servers for local use.
I think the problem (for isp and opendns) is that DNS costs money to serve, and what opendns is doing with filling in extra dns records i find helpful. Sure there are google ads on the side, but i could care less. As far as ISPs go, maybe they should raise their already skyrocketing rates (compare to other countries such as Greece) and slow the speeds even more (where is ADSL2 in the US?). It seems like prices are in a stalemate, with the ISPs not dareing to go any lower for fear of retaliation of other isps.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
How does one submit a bug-report against a US Patent? Maybe the USPTO needs to open up a bugzilla DB to handle things like this?