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NSI sells registrant info. Again.
Well, it appears that a number of you noticied NSI's latest escapade. Yes, this time our friends have decided to create company profiles of all registrants - including
addresses, ownership, number of employees, years in business, annual sales, and phone and facsimile numbers. Mmm...I thought spam was bad enough. Who the heck is the . in .com? Um-a bunch of you needed to be told this was a joke (the last sentence). Sarcasm, folks.
But I'm curious, how do they get things like number of employees or annual sales?
I don't know how you call that in english but in french it's "espionnage industriel"
Maybe you could get someone like the EFF to back you.
I bet you'd be able to get swamploads of donations from other irritated net.geeks as a support fund. Even if it's just $5/per, at thousands of per's, that's a lot of cash for helping fund that sort of campaign.
Since when can a top-level-domain be "verbified"?
Same way a site can be slashdotted. (or, same way the word verb can be "verbified").
All I can say is find a lawyer fast and get to a judge ASAP. The article said that NSI would start offering this new "service" on Monday. I would think that a good lawyer could draw up a case against this solid enough to get an injunction before Monday, but you'd have to get it front of a judge before then.
This whole this seems like major BS. How can they roll it out now and implement an opt-out option at a later date?
joe
I'm the p in http.
top that.
At least a decent operating system (it doesn't include Windows) does not provide/sell your private data to spammers.
Oh, and I almost forgot; let them have a slow death... the time is comming
First Al Gore "invents" the Internet in some sort of psycho time warp. Now NSI is the "OS" of the 'Net. I shudder to think what could be next....
Is this era obsolete?
We're the "tel" in telnet:// -- we tell everyone all of your secret information.
I loved this quote in particular:
"We need to be more than a domain name company," said Douglas Wolford, NSI executive vice president. "We believe we are the operating system for the Internet."
If I believe I am a jumbo jet that doesn't make it so. With this kind of attitude who knows what they'll pull next...
For those of you who haven't registered your domain yet and don't care if it is a *.com,*.net or *.org domain, you might want to look into getting either a *.us or a *.nu domain.
For info on the *.us domain (wasn't too easy to find) check this out.
Among others, usnic.net seems to see *.nu domains for those interested:
http://www.usnic.net/main.htm
If you've got a static IP, you can always go the dynip.com route, too. (I perfer www.ez-ip.net, but that's just me).
Good Luck!
uselinux@email.com
Has anyone figured out how to replace bind yet? I'd love to see some system come into place that is not based on central databases at all...
NSI are also putting pressure on ICANN,
to ask all ccTLD's to declare whether they
are "open" or "closed", or more precisely,
whether or not they represent a threat to NSI's
globally-available domains.
Jon Postel must be spinning in his grave.
...as to how SAIC beat Microsoft to the punch.
I mean, does Bill actually lack that much vision?
...and/or...
Does SAIC really yeild that much influence?
If so, it REALLY is time to disband microsoft, forget about the evils of NSI and start worrying about SAIC. Then again, maybe SAIC and Microsoft jerk eachother off behind everyone's back... which would have larger implications than the entire Microsoft Monopoly thing. The last thing I want to see in this world is a Microsoft Weapons System (and don't start jabbering about Navy NT sea trials... that's not what I'm talking about).
Why isn't someone like microsoft JUMPING at the opportunity to become an alternate domaing source? I know Microsoft hires skads of "people smarter than me" to think up new licensing and enforcement schemes; why haven't any of them realized that, if you're going to sell a network operating system (NT/9x), DNS is a licensing strategy that has many positive features (from a microsoft prospective?). I know... Microsoft has dedicated all it's best talent to making sure the IPv6 RFCs have that Microsoft extend-embrace-of-death look and feel.
Leave it to a bunch of geeks to completely miss the societal/political ramifications of some smaller distrubing details of "their" little playground.
he he
There are few .com sites of interest already. Arts, sciences, education, Slashdots...all found elsewhere.
.net is the new .com.
Believe it:
I am the pixel in the dot in the colon in http://
This bunch of spam apologists want to go ahead, .MLM
.MLM for the exclusive use
.MLM represents the continued evolution of efforts .MLM
.MLM will be available this week and
.MLM will meet that demand.
without any delegated authority, and set up
"for the exclusive use of the internet Multi Level
Marketing community."
They didn't make it clear how they would get the
rest of the Net to recognise their domain, but
the email they sent out last week is being
discussed on inet-access. Here it is:
Hello:
We are contacting all TLD (top level domain) administrators to provide
notice that we claim the top level domain
of the internet Multi Level Marketing community. This claim is effective
as of Saturday April 10th, 1999 EST.
.MLM will serve the internet marketing community, and does not presume to
infringe on any other top level domain which may also be involved in
internet marketing.
by the Multi Level Marketing industry to eliminate unwanted commercial
email and at the same time to give netizens an opportunity to surf
domains as a matter of choice.
The domain administrator and registrar is:
Mr. Francis Fanego, Administrator
Multi Level Marketing NIC
498 Gladstone Avenue, Suite 1
Ottawa, Ontario K1R 5N8 CANADA
Telephone: 1 (613) 230-1466
Fax: 1 (613) 230-5352
Email: aleph@istar.ca
Operational name servers for
announcements will be posted to relevant newsgroups.
We welcome your comments both positive and negative. Over the last two
years we have followed the progress of gTLD issues including the very
progressive efforts initiated by the IFWP (International Forum on the
White Paper). We look forward to the day when top level domain issues are
resolved. However as business people we do not have the time to wait for
the conflicts to resolve.
The Multi Level Marketing industries need for a TLD infrastructure has
existed for some time and we anticipate
Regards
mlm.nic
Welcome to the world of IP were information [any information] is for sale.
5 5/qid%3D924322981/002-2583169-3012015
Owning the future by Seth Shulman covers the history and the ramifications beautifully
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/03958417
Think of it as dialing a phone number: 1(201) 555-2124 or whatever. And its quicker- no need to look up domain names. I just wished netscape, firewalls, and java supported plain IP addresses more fully.
but the 128 bit addresses are gonna make that a little harder...
-bobby
> Has anyone figured out how to replace bind yet?
The track record for doing that sort of thing isn't very promising :
Microsoft (WINS resolution): tried and failed; had conform to the prevealent standard; attempted to extend and embrace, only to end up doing their native name resolutions over DNS.
AlterNIC (implicid self-declaration that DNS was a free and open system): besides being run by Idiots(tm), they steped on too many important toes and were burnt to the ground legally and by the internet community at large. What can you say... the PhD community DOES NOT ENJOY being upstaged by a fscking tow truck driver... and they say there is not a cast system in America...
About a dozen or more propriatary name resolution schemes from people like: Netscape, Sun, Dec, Apple, Symbolics, HP, IBM, CDC, etc... All in limited, isolated use. Most having "glue" that bridges between the propritary standard and DNS.
Even great alternative ideas that operated within the bounds of the system (like the many various dynamic/free DNS services that used to exist) have been flushed down the tube.
The main problem that all implementors seem miss or discover to be a show-stopper is :
parallel resolution by likely time domain order
--------------
AltNIC InterNIC chokepoint Client
(res. fail) (IPaddr) ---------> (InterNICIPaddr)
(IPaddr) (IPaddr) ---------> (law suit)
(IPaddr) (res. fail)---------> (AltIPaddr)
(res. fail) (res. fail)---------> (res fail)
That last state is probably going to take 180sec*2... maybe longer depending on the efficency and availability of root level AltNIC servers.
Any alternate NIC system that is put in place must toe the line with the existing NIC systems. So, unless you have some sort of Name Peering arangment with the IETF and the people who run the various root level servers for TLDs, you're going to see an across the board increase in the amount of time that it takes for name resolution to happen for your alternate name space. And, you're never going to have control over your name space. If someone developes an attractive name, the other legally authorized name spaces will just take it from you like candy from a child. The only alternative is to hijack (AlterNIC) or develope an independant name space mechanism (smart browsing). Also, you're probably going to be starting from scratch. I don't know what the ISC's policy is on code modifcations. Freshmeat lists the license as free to use, but restricted (which makes me wonder how the hell it ended up in the Debian distrbiution... I guess this OSS movement thing isn't as unrestricted as it would like to believe... ah, but it's impolite to poke at OSS with the many sharp sticks I have at my disposal on this particular fourm... still it is important to remember that every philosphy/system/goverment/religion has its roots firmly planted in fertil ground of hypocracy).
You know, it's funny, when I was back in school, Dr. Mills (NTP) used to talk about all the big companies using "fire jumpers" who's only job was to run around the world attending IETF and other professional society meetings and conferences. Their only function in life was to keep an eye out and an ear to the ground for emerging standards that were gaining wide spread industry acceptance, all while promoting their companies "standards" as the way and the light for everyone else to pursue. To think that the IETF has unbiased interest in seeing the internet do the right thing is to be vastly ignorant of reality.
The internet was devloped with enough top level control mechanisms to keep things from running way from the creators (mae-east/west, DNS, ARIN, etc...in the same sort of way that China controls what political parties are allowed to exist). Please try to remember that. It is only by the grace (and a good dose of confusion and lack of direction) of the multiple entities who really control the internet that things aren't run like way the Stazi operated in West Berlin. Who knows... maybe some day we'll be lucky enough to know an internet that is run like West Berlin.
Spooks Are In Charge.
'nuff said...
This article sucked ass, its started out like a news item and ended as a commercial for InfoUSA. What complete garbage...
Dude....
carpe' diem...
...turn your cell phone into pay-for-service and make big bucks off of NSI stupidity...
...remember keepem' hanging on the phone as long as possible...
With the money you make, buy another cell phone at which you're friends and clients can call you.
Actually, someone already did mention the AlterNIC and it's collective stupidity (ok, well, ignorance of the "Way Things Are Done(tm)")
If you're ready to re-invent the wheel, just sign yourself up on the nic-list@flounder.net. It's been dead for the last 3 weeks (since it's inception... a product of NSI discontent on the ISP mailing lists).
The fact of the mater is that, unless you're ready to become "super monekey-boy coder from the planet compiler", the ISC license is going to prevent you from creating derived works from bind x.x.
Considering enormous amount of closed client code for name resolution out there, the DNS system will not change any time soon (despite all of the best efforts of the OSS community).
Of course somone could do something really slick like geographical domaining based on lat-long or re-map telephone numbers to names/IP addresses, but I really think the only viable option comming down the line in the near future is an LDAP based name resolution system. It would have to exist independently of the ISC's DNS system, but I believe (and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) the LDAP code does not have the licensing issues that ISC's widely used bind implementation.
There are only two ways to legitimately attack the problem. One is at the client level (almost impossible due to diversity/closed code) and the other is at the backbone level (already known to be impossible due to policy and closed code)... Humm... there seems to be a common thread in that observation... The third way is to hijack and that option has been taken care of now.
The other fact at hand is that, technical issues aside, the internet has firmly entered the twilite zone of lawyer land (about 5+ years ago, actually). This is the price paid when transitioning form a research curiosity to main stream every day part of life. Very few technologies look the same after making this transition. The internet you know and love will slowly die... long live the internet...
No wonder Microsoft is working soooo hard on getting NT5 directory service right (I wonder if NSI knows it might be obsolete in a year or three?)
. html
http://webreview.com/wr/pub/98/03/06/edge/index
Applying LDAP to the Web
The usefulness of an LDAP-enabled Web for us humble Internet dwellers is hinted at in RFC 1959 of the Internet Engineering Task Force's Network Working group, co-authored by Howes. Entitled, "An LDAP URL Format" the document outlines an LDAP syntax for a URL using a Universal Resource Name (URN) convention. URNs are simply the names of resources divorced from their locations (and is itself a specification, making extremely slow progress at the IETF). An LDAP URL might look like:
ldap://ldap.domain.top.
Howes explains:
"The problem today is that documents on the Web are referred to in many different places, and in a very location-dependent manners through URLs. If you rename a document or move it to a new machine, you get broken links. Referring to documents by a URN provides a level of indirection, allowing you to move or rename your document without having to go out and update all the places that may refer to your document. Just change its location in the directory referred to by the URN."
So why couldn't every Web host establish an LDAP-enabled directory structure for all the URLs each host stores, whereby every URL on the Internet is available for constant update through multimaster replication? Directories could chirp away at each other into the night keeping each other informed of changes in the location of Web-based information. Using the URN convention with LDAP, if the Web page had a new URL, the link to the old address would still retrieve the page, kind of like a reference librarian explaining the book you seek is at the branch across town.
"One organization might run a directory server with all the documents it maintains. My organization runs one and they are hooked up together seamlessly into this Web of directories that provides the URN service," Howes explains.
Beyond the technical challenges of global replication, every ISP, every Web server would have to be willing to enter into such an arrangement for our delivery to LDAP directory Nirvana, something which Howes says won't happen any time soon. "It's not something that's magically going to happen," said Howes. "It definitely requires administrators to take the time to set things up."
Well, as they say in their press release - they're business people, who don't have the time to wait for formalities like getting all the root nameservers to recognise their new gTLD.
> Until recently it was very easy to suck our
.com (and other) zone files was pulled, due mainly to the fact that spammers were abusing them to send email to "everyone under .com".
> database based on retrieving the zone file
> and diffing it.
Surely this only applies to the domain name and the name server info, from the bare minimum IN NS records?
It must be pointed out that the open access to the
What I'd really like to know is, did NSI pull this access due to some moral obligation to make life harder for spammers, or simply because the FTP servers were getting hammered?
>As for replacing BIND, what happens if you give named a root-servers file with different root servers in it?
It should be interesting to see what happens when your "major international corporations" client is confronted with their first set of lawsuites due to trademark, copyright and international TLD name space violations.
That alternate root server thing has been tried and unless you have some sort of pull with the folks that run the existing root level servers, they're not going to let it happen.
So, keep supplying your clients with your obviously superior advice. It should be humorious to read about the resulting mess in the next 5 years and I'm sure the lawyers will have a fieldday cleaning up your mess. Still, if your clients can't agree on who's going to be "in control" maybe this is just another corporate stupidity squad training mission.
Rule-of-Thumb :
Engineers are slack-jawed morons when it comes to the way in which REAL world actually operates; this is the energy gradient upon which lawyers, businessmen and politicians feed.
This is legal in the US. Any information they collected about you in any way can be sold, traded, etc. unless they explicitly agreed not to do so.
Under the new EU Privacy Directive, on the other hand, this is strictly illegal.
(I spent a semester researching on-line privacy issues in a class)
- pmitros
Perhaps this is what you should expect a sample report to look like. All the information below is available at no charge, from public sources, over the Internet.
NETWORK SOLUTIONS INC.
Registered URL: http://www.netsol.com
Stock Ticker: NSOL
Address:
505 Huntmar Park Drive
Herndon, VA 20170
EXECUTIVES AND DIRECTORS:
Michael A. Daniels
Position: Chairman of the Board, Acting Chief Executive Officer
Age: 53
Class A Shares as of 3/12/1999: 29,560
Robert J. Korzeniewski
Position: Chief Financial Officer, Acting Chief Operating Officer
Age: 42
Class A Shares as of 3/12/1999: 25,842
1998 Sal: $165,462, Bon: $90,000, plus other compensation including options
Bruce L. Chovnick
Position: Senior Vice President and General Manager, Internet Technology Services
Age: 39
Class A Shares as of 3/12/1999: 4,294
1998 Sal: $181,730, Bon: $65,000, plus other compensation including options
Resides: 19209 Autumn Maple Ln, Gaithersburg, MD 20879, MONTGOMERY CO
Residential Phone: 301-977-3776
Jonathan W. Emery
Position: Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary
Age: 47
David H. Holtzman
Position: Senior Vice President, Engineering
Age: 42
Class A Shares: 13,704
1998 Sal: $157,615, Bon: $70,000, plus other compensation including options
Resides: 904 Monroe St, Herndon, VA 20170, FAIRFAX CO
1/1/1999 Assessed Value: $270,660
Most Recent Sale Date: 6/11/1998 @ $313,500
Residential Phone: 703-481-9050
Donald N. Telage
Position: Senior Vice President, Internet Relations and Special Projects
Age: 54
Class A Shares: 39,488
1998 Sal: $188,999, Bon: $85,000, plus other compensation including options
Resides: 2110 Highcourt Ln UNIT 203, Herndon, VA 20170, FAIRFAX CO
Co-owned with TELAGE SUSAN M
1/1/1999 Assessed Value: $103,600
Most Recent Sale Date: 3/28/1995 @ $116,400
Residential Phone: 703-787-9438
Douglas L. Wolford
Position: Senior Vice President, Marketing and Sales
Age: 37
Charles A. Gomes
Position: Vice President, Customer Programs
Age: 52
Resides: 17307 Bighorn Ct, Round Hill, VA 20141, LOUDOUN CO
Residential Phone: 540-338-9292
Michael G. Voslow
Position: Vice President, Finance and Treasurer
Age: 39
Resides: 1310 Alps Dr, Mc Lean, VA 22102, FAIRFAX CO
Co-owned with VOSLOW REBECCA A R
1/1/1999 Assessed Value: $398,765
Most Recent Sale Date: 12/3/1991 @ $431,000
Residential Phone: 703-442-7891
Karla Leavelle
Position: Director, Human Resources
Resides: 4610 Gramlee Cir, Fairfax, VA 22032, FAIRFAX CO
Co-owned with GRIENDLING ROBERT J
1/1/1999 Assessed Value: $256,250
Most Recent Sale Date: 6/30/1995 @ $245,000
Residential Phone: 703-978-4468
Fixed it.
Yeah, I'm that guy.
If half of the people commenting on this story aren't talking through their hats, you're going to be "growing" like Scientology, soon. Sure, the hordes dropping y'all like a slimy potato may end up being just as annoyed with the competition as they are with you, but that won't help much when the layoffs come.
Mind the Gap
I guess we'll have to go out and force all the companies that will do registration to not give out this sort of info. But I'm curious, how do they get things like number of employees or annual sales?
isnt that a nine inch nails song?
i am the dot in your dot com... (and i control you)
i am the slash in your slash dot... (and i control you)
i am the core in your home directory... (and i control you)
no, thats not right...
;)
On the other hand, I do submit postal information with companies and organizations I do wish to send me commercial postal mail, catalogs, flyers, etc. I have even at one time or another offered my email address to a company which stated that they would occasionally send me advertising in exchange for a service. I just procmail their advertising into a folder other than my inbox. Yes I do look at it--not closely usually, but I do look.
My time has a price. If you force me to spend my time reading spam, I will take the extra time do do whatever I can to help make your life hell. If you want to offer me a useful service in exchange for commercial email which I can sort someplace other than my primary inbox and look at it when I want, I'll actually look at it.
As for postal junkmail, I can very easily process that at my convenience anyway.
Hmm, the .us domain seems to be administered by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). Hopefully they will continue to keep things sane even without Postel around to check up on them...
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
$5? - you crazy man.
Glad someone here is paying attention before
over-reacting.
That doesn't even make sense. The whole point of the Internet is the lack of central control, which is why NSI is obsolete, and getting stupider every day.
If NSI is the operating system, could we please format them, and reinstall sooner? I hate it when an operating system does stupid things behind my back without telling me.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
ldap://ldap.domain.top
.
No, more like:
http://some.domain.with.new.top:ldap/index.html
The front part of a URL describes the protocol over the connection, not how to find it.
Yeah, right!
Sorry, but maybe I should have put :> somewhere there. But big part of capitalism driving is plain old greed!
J.
Any Brits want to comment on this and perhaps point this out to NSI?
Nick
-- "It's a sad day for American capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over Central Park" - Jim Moran
It just doesn't end with them does it? I can't wait to go somewhere else for registration. I have a transfer pending from February - forget it. I have to tell the guy to leave the site where it is, we can't get it moved. They don't respond to emails or answer the phone. It wasn't always this bad. I think they've gone off the deep end.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Bruce Chovnik's got a SUCKY commute! Gaithersburg to Herndon. He must hate life. :)
computers://use.urls. People use Networds.
I was briefly confused too...it turns out that the Slashdot link is in two adjacent parts; click on the first part (as you and I did), and it takes you to an uninteresting internic page. Click on the second part to get to the actual story.
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
It's one thing for people to be able to contact the owner of a particular IP/URL, but it's quite another for them to do massive, indeed internet-universal, privacy violation.
And selling to spammers...that adds insult to injury.
I know, I'm preaching to the choir, but still, this really bugs me.
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
And your point would be...?
.net info. They have those, too.
It's not like they won't be selling
No, the other one. Yeah, that's me.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
With regard to privacy, it has never been the case that domain registration information was private. It makes some sense for this data to be a matter of public record; the purpose of collecting the data is to provide a means of contacting the people responsible for a domain. Since DNS is a public resource, and no one is forced to register a domain, there is some justification for the data being publicly available in order to facilitate the proper management of the public resource. I realize that there are also strong arguments to be made in favor of privacy. However, this is not my major concern. It is easy enough to register a domain with a mail drop and a voice mailbox as the contact information. Or some people provide entirely false information. I don't think that is a good idea, but it can be done. Personally I am not in favor of supporting anonymous domain registration, any more than I would be in favor of anonymous automobile registration.
What I am concerned about is the concept that NSI claims to own the data. It might perhaps seem counterintuitive, but I am claiming that I don't mind NSI giving away my data, yet I object to their selling it. And it's not really even the selling per se that is the problem. It's that since they claim to own it, they aren't really selling it. They are licensing it, and claim that no one else has the right to distribute it.
Effectively they have stolen my data, by licensing it to third parties under different terms than I've previously granted them permission. If they want to actually own my data, to the extent that they can license it as they please, then they had damn well better buy it from me first.
In addition, they appear to be combining the data with other data they obtain from third parties. Yet I am given no opportunity to review this additional data and correct any errors. Others have pointed out that much of the information NSI is selling can be obtained from D&B or other sources. However, when you obtain that information from D&B, it doesn't come pre-packaged with domain name registration information, and that is the crucial difference. NSI may have the right to resell information they have legitimately purchased from another source such as D&B, but they do not have the right to comingle it with my domain registration information, since they don't own the latter.
I feel doubly screwed by this, since I've paid them for this great privilege. What a great business to be in: one group of people pays them $70 each to collect the data, and another group buys the resulting database!
Now they claim that they own the data, and that the database is proprietary such that they can do with it as they will. I think this is a load of crap, and am tempted to have a lawyer draft a cease and desist order demanding that NSI refrain from claiming that the data I've provided to them regarding my domain is proprietary to them, selling that data to a third party, or using the data in any other way not explicity authorized by their contract with the NSF.
I like .cx myself. They give you a month free, and are about $17/year.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
Creating life as we know it and personally supervising evolution. Who knows maybe that's why humanity's so fscked up right now? :)
"We want to take over the world, but we don't want to do it tomorrow, it's OK if it's next week"-- Linus Torvalds
"We need to be more than a domain name company," said Douglas Wolford, NSI executive vice president. "We believe we are the operating system for the Internet." ...
I've heard a lot of pompous BS masquerading as mission statements in my time, but this one takes the cake. This is even less connected to reality than the usual PR snowjob companies release to the press.
It's too bad we can't give people like this a reality injection and watch them squirm as they realize their own ignorance.
I, for one, intend to wait until I can by my domain from someone OTHER than NSI. I've waited this long, after all
illum oportet crescere me autem minui
Oh, I almost forgot. NSI sucks. What arrogance.
support gun control: take guns from cops
it's fun
support gun control: take guns from cops
Not disagreeing, but it's:
.com : Commercial Institutions. (So personal .com's are breaking the rules...)
.net : Networking Equipment. (Not instutions... In other words, no services should actually be run off these, they're just there for traceroutes and the like.)
.org : Anything that doesn't fit into the first two. In other words, organisations that might make a profit, but couldn't be described as a commrcial institution. Individuals fit into here I think best...
-
-
-
are you a bot? saying something five times doesn't make it so.
interesting how netsol had two choices in the face of competition (offer better service, or abuse monopoly for the rest of its duration) and chose the one least likely to retain customers after the end of its monopoly. isn't that a good basis for a shareholder class action lawsuit, never mind the others that have been mentioned?
i'll be glad when i have a choice.
Anoyone want to organize the announcement of a boycott of NSI? With the new registries about to open up and a pending boycott, that may be enough to depress their share price (which is the only thing that matters to them anyway). Might be enough to scare them off.
That information is available in databases from infoUSA and Dun and Bradstreet. It is regularly used in marketing and direct mail sales. You can buy subsets of the data for anywhere from $70 to several thousands of dollars...
(Yes I work for NSI. No I don't pretend to speak for them since they don't pretend to speak for me.)
1) that information is available from several companies: infoUSA and Dun and Bradstreet are just two. You can purchase the same information for anywhere from $30 to several thousands of dollars.
NSI did _not_ get this information from companies during the registration process. They got it from the same place that any of the other yellow page services get it.
2) NSI has never sold the database to spammers. Until recently it was very easy to suck our database based on retrieving the zone file and diffing it.
(Yes I work for NSI. No I don't pretend to speak for them since they don't pretend to speak for me.)
Send me private email. I might be able to do something for you. We are under a tremendous load due to growth. Plus its really hard finding good help to do front line customer support these days.
(Yes I work for NSI. No I don't pretend to speak for them since they don't pretend to speak for me.)
The information in that database is available from several companies and is compiled from public sources. infoUSA and Dun and Bradstreet are just two. That information isn't part of the Internic database and isn't discovered during the registration process.
You can purchase the same information for pennies per company. Its compiled from the yellow pages, SEC filings, and by even calling the companies directly.
(Yes I work for NSI. No I don't pretend to speak for them since they don't pretend to speak for me.)
The information in the database mentioned in the article is not from the registration database. Read the first paragraph again, NSI isn't licensing the database _to_ infoUSA, its licensing the data _from_ infoUSA. infoUSA is an aggregator of data about companies. They get it from public sources like the yellow pages, SEC filings and by calling the company directly.
NSI is _not_ selling the data to infoUSA and its not getting the data from registrants. Its using already public information the same way that 411 and the other yellow pages services do.
The service is no different from the services that infoUSA already sells their info to: Yahoo, MSN, AOL, etc.
(Yes I work for NSI. No I don't pretend to speak for them since they don't pretend to speak for me.)
Yah, 128 bit addressing. Sure, like we're really ever going to see that.
Probably about the same time we see the US finally adopt the metric system.
Both are pretty much the same line of BS from the US we've been hearing for years.
IPv6 (aka IPng - IP The Next Generation):
Conceptualized back when Star Trek-The Next Generation was still on. Now here, where Star Trek:Deep Space Nine is done in a couple weeks, it STILL ain't in place. (And we all home they cancel that pathetic ST:Voyager series. Send us all a nude picture of 7of9 and send the rest back to whereever they came from)
Realize smoke up your ass when you see/hear/feel it...
NSI is "the .com company"
.com"
BR?
Sun is "the . in
This is unsuprising. They'll probably stay in business for awhile based on all the kickbacks and slushfunds they get from spammers.
;)
Thank god domains will soon cost $5, and NSI will be broke due to competition.
--
Reading down a bit furthur, you might come across:
"InfoUSA, whose best known subsidiaries are DatabaseAmerica and American Business Information, also will add NSI's ".com" directory to its Web site."
Please explain to me how InfoUSA can add NSI's ".com" directory to their database if NSI is not selling it to them?
Personal information like that is property, if NSI is generating reveneue from my personal information, I want a cut, so I have just politely informed them that the fee to include my information in any such database is a mere $500. I think I may be going too easy on them...
It won't do them any good unless they get all the root nameservers to recognize the MLM top-level-domain. If all the roots don't see it, then anything under MLM won't resolve.
The following sentence is true.
The previous sentence is false.
Pining for the days when The Glorious MEEPT!!! graced SlapDash with his wisdom.
If I'm being really stupid here, please be gentle, but I don't see anything like that at that link, or on any pages connected to it. What's up?
----------------------
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
"Error Type 3. User IQ (-4) out of range (0..200). Please reboot."
----------------------
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
I, for one, think it amazing that Alternic has yet to be mentioned in these postings here. I mean, Kashpureff worked his but off hacking Network Solutions, and went to jail over fighting this crap. Why hasn't the open source community really enveloped Alternic?
I paid for a service. I had no choice in vendors, because NSI was given a governmentally approved monopoly. I can live with this; it was a necessary evil.
Now, however, according to the article at http://www.news.com/News/ Item/0,4,0-35228,00.html?st.ne.fd.mdh you plan on selling this data that I provided to you with the expectation of privacy. I hereby serve notice that if you sell my information to anyone at anytime, I will file suit immediately.
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
or industrial espionage.
~enucite~
I'm only half-way down the comments (nested-order by score) and I've seen you say this same thing about 3 or 4 times!
For the love of God! Just post _ONE_ toplevel comment, and quit filling up my screen with this crap.
--Question--
Does anyone know if there is an option to filter USER comments from the comments page?
If there isn't anything: ROB can you please put a section in the preferences page where we can enter the user names of people whose comments we want to filter out?
~enucite~
As for replacing BIND, what happens if you give named a root-servers file with different root servers in it?
For the past six months or so, I've been involved in a discussion between representatives of a number of major international corporations, mostly in the financial services sector, who are considering building a kind of a next-generation Internet, called the Grid, co-operatively owned and operated (similar to the UK's NIC), based upon IPv6, with all of the advantages that entails.
From what I've heard in the meetings I've attended, they plan to build an intial backbone around the world, centred and controlled from London, linking to Dublin, Paris, Frankfurt, Berlin, Moscow, Hong Kong, Tokyo and a couple of cities in the United States. It would initially only be used by the companies involved in initially setting it up, but, later, anyone would be allowed to join and become equal shareholders in the non-profit company which will own and operate the backbone, as long as they pay their share of the cost of maintaining the backbone.
The technical details aren't really an issue at the moment. One of the committee invited me along after hearing me speak at a conference and I've been advising them as to what's possible and what's not. What you've outlined above is the sort of thought process I had to go through to figure out how the Grid's DNS system could interface with the exiting Internet's.
It's all quite interesting. Whether it'll actually pan out is another matter, but their reasons for wanting to do this (dissatisfaction with the current ownership and administration of the Internet and with it's security) aren't exactly unreasonable.
Funnily enough, the main things they end up discussing in their meetings are related to the administration of Grid - i.e. how the administrating company would be set up and owned, whether all the stakeholders should have an equal vote or not, how to ensure that no one company or organisation can gain too much power, etc. They're not all that worried about the technical side, because it's all pretty much possible - or will be when IPv6-capable networking equipment and operating systems become available.
It's a lot of fun sitting there and watching them all get into seriously deep legal discussions and so on...
The Dodger
Hacker & International Network Architect
..eventually.
As for replacing BIND, what happens if you give named a root-servers file with different root servers in it?
For the past six months or so, I've been involved in a discussion between representatives of a number of major international corporations, mostly in the financial services sector, who are considering building a kind of a next-generation Internet, called the Grid, co-operatively owned and operated (similar to the UK's NIC), based upon IPv6, with all of the advantages that entails.
From what I've heard in the meetings I've attended, they plan to build an intial backbone around the world, centred and controlled from London, linking to Dublin, Paris, Frankfurt, Berlin, Moscow, Hong Kong, Tokyo and a couple of cities in the United States. It would initially only be used by the companies involved in initially setting it up, but, later, anyone would be allowed to join and become equal shareholders in the non-profit company which will own and operate the backbone, as long as they pay their share of the cost of maintaining the backbone.
The technical details aren't really an issue at the moment. One of the committee invited me along after hearing me speak at a conference and I've been advising them as to what's possible and what's not. What you've outlined above is the sort of thought process I had to go through to figure out how the Grid's DNS system could interface with the exiting Internet's.
It's all quite interesting. Whether it'll actually pan out is another matter, but their reasons for wanting to do this (dissatisfaction with the current ownership and administration of the Internet and with it's security) aren't exactly unreasonable.
Funnily enough, the main things they end up discussing in their meetings are related to the administration of Grid - i.e. how the administrating company would be set up and owned, whether all the stakeholders should have an equal vote or not, how to ensure that no one company or organisation can gain too much power, etc. They're not all that worried about the technical side, because it's all pretty much possible - or will be when IPv6-capable networking equipment and operating systems become available.
It's a lot of fun sitting there and watching them all get into seriously deep legal discussions and so on...
The Dodger
Hacker & International Network Architect
They contract with companies that already exist to provide this information.
As for how they get it, I think they survey the companies involved. I think how it works is that this information is then used as a package meant to help judge the quality of company credit. Since most businesses need/want credit, it's not hard for them to get the information.
How accurate it is, of course, is anybody's guess. Getting data for public companies is pretty easy, but I think all they can do for private firms is ask.
D
First post on my new (well, used, well, ancient, well, 200mhz R4400) Indigo2. Nice to be back to SGI again. Irix(tm) is a weakness of mine..
----
Lets do it. Who out there has the contacts to get something like this moving?
--
I don't like either of those slogans. "What can we dot-com for you?"
Since when can a top-level-domain be "verbified"?
Just another A.C.
I am getting massively spammed by people on my cell phone # which is in my registrant info at Internic. Its pretty friggin annoying.
Something I've mentioned before (I think) is an idea I've had regarding copyrighting your personal information.
Why not?
It's obvious that your personal information (age, sex, race, shopping preferences) is worth a lot of money. Consider how many companies pay big bucks to other companies to get that information. Consider how desperate many companies are to get that information; so desperate, in fact, that they are willing to bribe you with t-shirts and tech support.
The current information service industry makes money by selling information collated from data they gather from various sources.
Why not gather every scrap of information about yourself into a searchable database (your brain, maybe?), and then charge companies for the use of that data?
Copyright yourself, or at least the data fingerprint you leave upon the world. If the software industry can make much ado about little 1s and 0s being copyrightable, surely your personality can be copyrightable. And wouldn't it make you feel a lot better to know that every time your name passed through a database in some obscure system, you made a few cents, and if the bad ole NSI sells that information about you without your consent, well... they could meet with Mr. Copyright Infringement suit. Or pay you royalties...
Hmm.. Banner ads for the soul?
-=Julian=-
I am the 0 and the 1.
(All this reminds me of NIN's "Mr. Self Destruct", heh)
Hello. I just got this article off of c|net: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,0-35228,00.html? st.ne.fd.mdh
I have but one thing to say to you regarding this: it is utter and complete bullshit.
I really like the lack of an Opt Out policy that will be around a while. That is really sweet. What a wonderful way for you all to get a buttload of money for your database up front by making sure EVERYONE gets loads and loads of junk mail!
Ohhhh I can't wait for the day the other registration systems come online. You can bet your sweet ass that after this latest load of horse hockey that I will be taking my business elsewhere.
I will NEVER do business with a bunch of low life privacy invaders like you. You lost a customer for good.
If information is valuable, this amounts to theft. Since they have/had a monopoly, this is just evil. A class-action suit might be just what the doctor ordered.
In thier inept attempts to remain relevant to the internet they have managed to begin alienating themselves from their lifeblood. This is a rather greedy move (legal? yes. right? no.) that follows up the ballsy move of redirecting registrant traffic to their own site. By scrambling to remain relevant, they may have managed to do just the opposite.
That's a really good question..
.com is up to 400+megs, but that's no big deal these days, if that's all you have on your box. Now, all you have to do is a zone transfer of '.' once a week or two, and you have all of the root servers. Then you do an NS query for each TLD listed in the root server file once a day or two. Even if there are a thousand of them, it would be a small record. You would then be going directly to the TLD servers for that information. And in the systems that don't switch over to the new system, they would get one more referral than usual.
Alternic was/is a good idea. In fact, I use (have been using) the db.root method for bind for a very long time now. But Alternic suffered from a lack of acceptance from the greater community, unfortunately. And they are a bit profit minded.
There is NO law that says I have to use the 'accepted' root servers for my name service. I can set my root servers to anything I damn well please. So then, this whole thing with NSI and et al is ridiculous, and strictly a matter of 'who does the government say runs the public database?'.
If 28 new registries pop up for new top level domains, it would take me 10 seconds to support each one of them. Why does that not happen? Well, BigCompany(tm) and its subsidiaries want to see central control instituted everywhere possible on everything in our lives, so that they can exploit those control points to leverage their profits. BigGovernment(tm) wants this too, so that they can 'Make Life Safer' for us by having it within their means to force direction and stifle radical change.
So, I would LOVE to see alternate registries and root servers, not under the purvue of any government agency or commitee, instituted. But That would take money. Gobs of it. And vision. And nobody whom HAS that money wants to spend it on this sort of thing. And noone whom has that vision seems to have that money. Also, noone has come up with a better way of maintaining all of this information, so it seems that the bind methodology will be with us for awhile. And so thus built into the DNS protocol is a central point of control.
Of course, it would be easy to use the existing bind implementation to ease that central control out from under us. There just needs to be a different strategy used for root server querying. Personally, I think that all of the top level domains should get their own root servers, if not multiple servers for each. The main root servers should only function as pointers to other TLD servers, thus eliminating the massive resource requirement. I believe
Under this scheme, any medium sized ISP could run a root server and have no problem keeping up with the load. It would NEVER get queried for name service unless you were running under the old system.
The issue then becomes, how the heck do the folks whom run TLD servers get compensated? I mean, there is no way I would run a TLD server unless I had funds coming in from somewhere. This is where the folks at BigCompany have exerted their control, and why we are left with the system we have now.
The current system has it that only registries would get money to support servers like this. Maybe that's the best way.. I don't know for certain. Something to think about.
Wow.. I'm getting long-winded..well, to sum up, I think the KEY here is to sluff off the TLD load from root servers to TLD servers. That way, root servers become less resource intensive, and the load gets distributed to all of the TLD servers, of which there could be many. Change the way we use bind a tiny bit, and we are off.
Yes, I KNOW that this would create additional traffic on an already loaded up internet.. but which do we want more.. a new method that decentralizes control a bit, or a few Kbps more of bandwidth at peak?
---
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Freedom."
If you check their web page, they now (do not know for how long they've been doing this) register your domain simultaneously under
WTF does this have to do with capitalism? Capitalism means NOT ALIENATING YOUR CUSTOMERS
so that they'll continue to do business with you
and you will continue to profit.
This is just plain old fucking GREED (I believe
that's older than capitalism).
-thomas
Calvin: I like to verb words. Remember when "access" was just a thing you had? Now it's something you do. It got verbed.
Perhaps if those of us that e-mailed NSI don't get personal responses from NSI stating they are going to remove us from their lists, we should call the 'people that matter' at home during dinner hour and ask them for a response then. :) Being that we now have all their home phone numbers and all thanks to this post.
:) Then keep calling till we get through.
If they lack respect for our privacy, why should we respect theirs? Heck, we *payed* them when we gave them our information, we had no choice, and nobody told us we were giving our private information away. If anyone deserves to lose their privacy between us and them, it's them.
Maybe we should group up and set a time to call if we don't get responses.
Just a thought, probably a crazy one though.
--SONET
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. --Benjamin Franklin
Well...go to internic and change all the contact info to @dev.nul. If you foul their database is it useful or valuable anymore?
Play Well
Oh sure I'd love to do that.. Now that you mention it I've sent several letter's in the proper contact changing form for over the past 4 months to get info changed. Mainly to switch from mail from verification to pgp. I've sent my public key and fingerprint info. Started this back in January and STILL havn't gotten any reply except for the automated, we've got your letter, thing. So good luck on switching your contact info to null, I'm sure thats top priority for them.. All they care about is thier money... they got yours.. so now your of no use.
Well, proving once again there is no limit to the marketing exec's stupidity/banality, only his annual budget.
Well since they are selling my info, I thought I might post theirs... But when I went to InfoUSA to find an address and number for their CEO, Vinod Gupta, I found he wasn't listed. InfoUSA is the company that will be reselling our information, however, it seems that some people care about their own privacy at the expense of others. I urge anyone who knows it to post his address, phone number, and the number of employees that he has. As a side note, the name of the NSI executive (Douglas Wolford) from the news.com story was also unlisted (on Switchboard).
You copyright things that you create.
:P
If you did it with things like fingerprints,
sex, and race your parents could sue the fuck
out of you.
what ever happened to good ol' fashioned visions of grandeur ;-)
I can just see the day when AT&T starts offering DNS for our phone lines... those numbers are too hard to remember ya know. Then we'll probably see a mass rush to register by domain name hoarders. Any thing to make a buck....
...not to mention the potential class action suit filed on behalf of your parents' parents, and their parents, and their parents, and...
:^)
Yikes.