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Network Solutions to Sell WHOIS Ads
Wired 2000 writes "A news article on InternetNews reports that Network Solutions plans to sell ad space on the WHOIS database, which raises the question whether NSI is allowed to profit off a database which they no longer own, particularly the highly trafficked WHOIS database. "
The problem here is that you're dead wrong.
The telco will slap you with a lawsuit so fast it'll make your head spin if you duplicat a phone book, or use it to build your own list for business purposes.
Companies such as telesurveying organizations sometimes end up using photocopied telephone book pages, but only with a waiver from the client stating that the client is liable and not the surveying org.
I got lectured to about this while in my indenture at Western Wats, years ago when i was just out of highschool, flat broke, and $5.50/hr sounded pretty good.
The companies that make these CDs with huge telephone directories go to great lengths to compile phone lists from other sources, and document those sources.
Case in point: My mother has never, ever had a telephone number in her own name, but is listed in nearly every one of those cd-rom databases, on some of them not only in Utah but also in New York and Hawaii at the numbers the family once occupied in those states.
True, the telco does sell advertising space on the cover and in the back of the phone book, but they don't make you sit through a promotional message with every 411 call, do they?
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
Now why would NSI be putting ads on their whois web page? Could it be that they are desparate for revenue and are trying to get it in any way shape or form? And why would they be desperate for money? Could it be that up until now their entire business has depended on a government delivered monopoly, and now they are losing that monopoly? In other words, I take this as a sure sign that NSI is definately losing their monopoly cash cow, and THEY KNOW IT. So now they are looking for alternative income sources anywhere they can. This is a Good Thing for all Friends Of The Revolution and others who want open domain registration and more top level domains.
I moved a while back, and just noticed that ARIN didn't have my current address - and had constructed a new NIC handle from my old one when they spun off.
While I was there I took a look at their fee structure - and was floored. $2,500 for a class-C - IF you qualify. And then $30 a year to maintain it, too. This is on top of my domain name, of course. Don't like it? Rent some numbers from your ISP, or THEIR ISP, or the one above them. And pay their markup. Of course if you move, or change ISPs, you'll have to change your numbers. (A private block is now called "portable".) And the ISP will want you to pay for all those numbers (that THEY have to pay for) whether they're routing packets to them or not.
And if I want an ASN (Autonomous System Number) so I can participate in the more advanced routing protocols, that's ANOTHER 500 bucks, and ANOTHER $30 annual fee.
They've started allocating IPv6 addresses, too. You know, the new version of internet protocol with about 10**39 addresses - enough addresses to assign a big block to every atom in the lithospere. (Or is that enough to give several to every subatomic particle in the known universe?) But they want to conserve those, too (maybe encoding routing information into them - and thus casting it in concrete and recreating the pre-dotist mail routing problems). So pony up a few kilobux if you want an allocation. And keep yet another $30 annual fee coming, forever.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I wouldn't mind a banner ad on every screen if they'd stop charging for domain names. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
we get a group together like the W3C to run the registry database. An injunction by the US gov't would be able to get control of it. NSI is nothing but a few corporate types and some engineers that maintain everything. And you pay them 70$ for two years (multiply 70$ by about 20,000 domain registries a day). They don't have a ton of overhead so most of your money goes into the shareholders pockets. Ads on the whois database just means they're making money off you over the 70$ you paid. This is crap, they don't own your information, so they out to have to pay you with the money from the ad on the whois page. Hey maybe next they'll have auctions! networksolutionsbay .com
now there's an idea.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
OK, first off, I don't believe they're putting text based adds in the lookups themselves, just banners on their whois portal page, which I consider to be totally fair. If they were, however...
This information bought to you by Pepsi(tm) :
COKE-DOM
Coca Cola Corporation..
..
..
..
:)
"Binaries may die but source code lives forever"
-- Unknown
SkyHawk
Andrew Fremantle
Correct me if I'm wrong but the main subject says that NSI no longer owns the database? I think this is uncorrect. The current setup is that so that each company who issues the top level domains .com, .net and .org hold their own databases. So if you try looking up a domain registered by "register.com" on Network Solutions database, you wouldn't be able to see it. Drew
It's not that their database isn't updated a lot, they only enter domain information for domains they register as do register.com entering domain information on their database for domains theyve only done. The shared services is the joint database of all the ICANN members so that Joe Bloggs doesn't try register a domain he thinks free because he looked at the wrong database.
Visit www.askreggie.com and you'll see one of many WHOIS web page interfaces with adverts. AskReggie happens to be owned by Andover.net, who also own Slashdot.
The point? Well you have to realise that Network Solutions are talking about doing exactly the same thing; putting adverts on their WEB PAGE INTERFACE and NOT, I repeat NOT, on the actual WHOIS data itself.
So if you continue using a command-line or desktop WHOIS utility, or use the same web page outside Network Solutions that you already do, then you'll get no more or less adverts than you ever did.
In short: this is a NON-STORY.
Which makes me wonder whether the people who wrote the story and submitted it understand the difference between a WEB PAGE INTERFACE and real, proper, raw WHOIS query. FFS.
--
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
Just Whose InterNIC Is It, Anyway?
.com, .net and .org domains since 1992, also sends a chill through would-be contenders only one month before competition is expected to be introduced.
By Elizabeth Wasserman for 'The Industry Standard'
March 26, 1999
Network Solutions' decision to reroute traffic from InterNIC.net puts speed bumps in the road
to competition.
The brazen move by Network Solutions Inc. last week to reroute traffic from the InterNIC to the company's homepage and redirect the popular "whois" directory annoyed the government,
prospective competitors and many others in the Internet community.
It also exposed potholes along the road to competition in the market for registering cyberspace addresses. The "whois" directory enabled anyone to check who owns a particular domain name. NSI's action means that the public and competing registrars can still check whether a name is in use, but now they must hunt for it at NSI's site. It also means the considerable "brand" equity of InterNIC now reverts to NSI.
Now this means you will probably spammed with a geocity type pop-up when you do a whois search on their page... groovy baybee
March 29 was supposed to mark the deadline for applicants seeking approval of the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to compete with Network Solutions in the business of registering domain names for a two-month test. Even if NSI decides to reverse its position, ICANN President Michael Roberts said the deadline has been extended until April 8, and the decision on the five new registrars will be delayed until April 21 due to the questions raised by NSI last week.
The move by the Herndon, Va.-based company, which has had an exclusive government contract to administer names in the popular
Many players bombarded ICANN and the U.S. Department of Commerce with questions about what
was going on. If NSI, without prior notice to the U.S. government, could boldly claim as company
property what many have come to view as a public resource, what would prevent the company from
taking other actions to thwart competition?
Definitely seems that they're taking other actions now. Unethical actions upon a trusted system which logically isn't their property.
"It was a shot across the bow," says Rich Forman, founder of Register.com, which has become one of the largest registrars of cyberspace addresses and plans to apply to become an ICANN "test" registrar. "The InterNIC and the 'whois' database were almost like the U.S. Postal Service. It was quasi-public and had a lot of trust built up in it.It was a public entity that people had trust in, and now they've turned it into a private vehicle."
NSI said in a statement that the move was designed to "help customers more easily find the information, services and tools they need." NSI spokesman Chris Clough said the company's action
was customer driven.
cough...bullshit "The intent was to make it simpler and easier and to consolidate the services we offer," he said. NSI combined the InterNIC domain-name-addressing site with its own homepage and said the new site was both faster to download and easier to reach.
But the rerouting of InterNIC also left potential competitors raising questions that U.S. officials had failed to resolve during their own negotiations with NSI. Under a cooperative agreement signed in October, NSI basically consented to operate the registry system for the most popular domains until 2000.
The registry function is akin to a wholesaler. Competition is being introduced initially by ICANN on the retail side, where registrars - including NSI - will compete for customers.
But the cooperative agreement left open certain issues, even though the countdown to competition
has already begun. In particular, companies that are considering entering the field still don't know what price the registry will charge registrars for each domain name sold. Another outstanding issue is the technical specifications for the electronic interface between the registrar system and the NSI system, as well as the terms of the contracts that will be entered into between registrars and the registry.
"From our position, we have to depend on the DoC and ICANN to work out what is the ongoing
relationship," says Sean Brophy, VP of corporate development at Verio, NSI's largest customer and a
major Web-hosting company. "This has not been terribly smooth," Brophy adds. "We are now seeing
a set of actions by people who are trying to position themselves very strongly."
Verio has not yet publicly announced whether it will apply to be a test registrar, but it is considered a likely candidate. Among the big-name companies that have inquired about entry to the domain-name marketplace, although they may not submit applications for the test, are MCI-WorldCom, America Online, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom and even AT&T.
Meanwhile, smaller companies that have been acting as intermediaries between NSI and consumers fear they will lose out as InterNIC becomes associated with NSI's brand. "It's like being channel 3, 6
or 10 as opposed to 57," says Larry Erlich of Domainregistry.com.
Want Root?
I think there is something like that on Freshmeat.
I don't think it would be illegal. Altavista does the same thing. Based on what you search for they display different ads. Do a search for cigars and an add for cigaraficianado appears. So I don't think it would cause a problem.
--patrick
--"Karma is justice without the satisfaction"
I can make a page with a CGI to WHOIS, and put ads on it, can't I?
(first post?)
First they say you can't advertise using the database and then they go and do it themselves?!? I realize there's a difference here but not that much.
By submitting a WHOIS query, you agree that you will use this Data only for lawful purposes and that, under no circumstances will you use this Data to: (1) allow, enable, or otherwise support the transmission of mass unsolicited, commercial advertising or solicitations via e-mail (spam)
Pork is not a verb
I can't imagine what would push these people to go and put banner ads on their webpage for the WHOIS. They are just begging for the US government to pull their rights to the database at all. This should be interesting to watch play out.
Gordon
They're only planning to advertise, via banner ads, on their whois web gateway.
I don't see anything wrong with that. Whois isn't a web service, it's a service that uses the whois protocol. NSI has a gateway to it up on their page, and seeing as NSI has a quasi-monopoly on domain registration, it's a very popular page. But anyone else can create a gateway to whois just as easily, and tons of people have - for instance just about every web hosting company which registers domain names. Many other whois gateways on the web already have ads, and there shouldn't be a different policy for NSI's.
Of course, if they start limiting direct whois access or placing text ads on results, that's another story. From everything I've read, though, they're not planning to do that.
aww man, i took too long making up that stupid rhyme, someone stole my spot!
*sobs*
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
They can't prohibit others from profiting by copying the database and providing a similar service, but they have the right to profit from it themselves (if they can). The whole thing about NSI or Commerce "owning" public, factual information strikes me as absurd.
Things would get a little more complicated if they decided to disallow queries to their version of the database. That would be a somewhat different issue, though.
I've found that to be a new "feature". Instead of daily updates like they say and it used to be, over the last few months its been getting slower and slower. I've seen the db go for two or three days without an update. It's like it was on crontab, but some idiot erased it and is doing it manually now since he doesn't know how to work crontab... quite sad really. Somebody needs to just bomb NSI into the ground.
Beware, Nugget is watching... See?
I'm taking bids for ping adspace. Whenever any packets are sent to my server, they will be returned with an ad in proportion to how many packets are sent. Rates are per ad sent (server daily ping reports will be sent out by request and $30 printing fee). "How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice. "You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't be here."
Bad things often happen to good people,
It is up to them to see that they remain good.
Is it just me, or is NSI really trying to piss off everyone? Maybe they're just having fun since they're going to lose control of domains.
If you're using whois from the command line, you will likely not see those animated GIF banner ads, am I right?
So now let me ask you again -- do you really care?
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
I think I'll start working on a whois binary that DOESN'T display the ads. Realistically, all the traffic in question (or a good chunk of it) is admins doing "whois" on the command line. All you need to do is create a version that "detects" the ad and obliterates it. Even better, one that ALSO detects their silly "license" and optionally (default to ON) removes that as well. :) D
Later tonight there will be a letter and petition for ISPs to sign on the website. The letter will be directed to the Dept of Justice and the Dept of Commerce asking them to look into this and stop NSI from acting in this fashion, and the petition will be an open petition to all registries and registrars calling for Domain Registration sites to be safe havens from this type of activity, and will spell out why.
ISPs are the the single source more responsible for funnelling domain registrations to NSI, and if another registrar caters to them, by providing a safe and easy way for ISPs to funnel their registrations through them, they will use their influence with their customers to show their dissatisfaction.
--
William X. Walsh
william@dso.net / william@dnspolicy.com
DSo Internet Services
(IDNO MEMBER)
Support the Cyberspace Association, the
constituency of Individual Domain Name Owners
http://www.idno.org
It hasn't been updated for the last 65 hours!
Or they could just push a one line alt="" field down to you... "Shop at amazon.com. Click here" in your text whois output. (just kidding, btw).
And even worse: That person actually had something interesting to say.
Sorry Rob, but the others are right - it only seems to affect queries via their web pages. I think that the 2 things which should concern us are: 1). We have to *pay* to download their ads. True it's only a small amount of extra data, but 2). who is (excuse the pun) to decide what material to allow in the form of adverts? A porn company (perhaps even the "open porn" company - I just listened to gis episode 4 for the 50th time :) might "justify" that they have every right to advertise via WHOIS. That then makes it illegal for many people (minors, those in China, etc...) to view the WHOIS database! not only that,but Ican forsee similar things to the RBL being imposed, then the sites which link to the whois database get censored for linking to it, etc... I hope this does happen because I really want NSI to go bankrupt and for the government to turn it (the WHOIS database) over to one of the non-profit groups that runs root servers (they know how to do things properly). NSI has no right to do this. This would be like the telephone company playing you an advert every time you ring 192 (directory assistance) - or whatever number it is that you guys dial in the US. Nobody's going to bother to read this so it don't matter much anyway... Jon.
http://www.jonmasters.org/
Blood-sucking pond scum? Get a life. NSI provides one of the more reasonably priced services on the internet. Are you pissed because domain registration is one of the few things you can't get for free? There are better things to petition and demand for than a refund of $200 for 4 years of domain name registration. Or is $5 dollars a month too much of a financial burden?
/*---------------------------*/
Man? What is man?
But a collection of chemicals with delusions of granduer.
What are your thoughts on TLDNS? They look like they are trying to bypass NSI and Internic.
"Hey! Let's sell ad space on a government-owned database! That'll further the conception that it's our property!"
Notwork Delusions strikes again. They're rising quickly on my "companies that must die" list, joining the ranks of Microsoft, Bell Atlantic, and UUNet..
---
I just received another Discover Card offer in the mail addressed to the wrong name at my address - I made a mistake while registering a domain name at NS, and listed the wrong person at my address. Guess who the mail was addressed to?
You can't even register for a domain name anymore without getting on a mailing list, and that's just f***ed up.
In an effort to make a profit, god has decided to advertise on all newborn human beings. The ads will start appearing on children as soon as next month. More details later. Heh.
Anyway, this doesn't sound like such a bad thing. It is only on their webpage, which I can't say I've ever used anyway. Just don't visit. Or if you must, use junkbuster.
my $cents = $penny x 2;
This sig is false.
People can download the .com (etc) zone files (if they ask nicely for access). Just run a diff on that to extract a list of new domains, do a whois on those, then send you half of the Amazon in ads for credit cards. Simple.
So it's not necesarily NSI who's selling the list to the junk mailers.
I think that the Commerce dept should file suit today in order to resolve the issue of ownership once and for all. NSI is a company trying to make a profit and it is hard to fault them for that. Problem is the data they are working with is of vital importance but of dubious ownership. As long as they assert their right of ownership and treat the data as theirs, they have a lot of lattitude of what they can do with it. Until the issue of ownership is settled, we will keep seeing this stuff done. Problem is public ownership puts the data in public domain and that could be worse. Spammers delight. If it becomes public, who knows who will use it for what purposes? The frigtening thing is I dont know which evil is worse.
Ok, if I own property next to a busy highway, am I allowed to put advertising on that space? Seems like the same sort of thing.
Mycroft
I can see it now, all WHOIS for a microsoft registered domain get Office ads. Or perhaps auctioning off popular WHOIS queries.
I realise they could just put a random ad every time you pull up the page, but there does seem to be some potential for targeting of advertisement here.
Would that be illegal?
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
are starting to really piss the shit out of me. If they start making money hand over fist with these advertisements I'm going to, not only insist, but demand I get a full refund of all monies I've paid to them over the past 4 years. I urge all of you who own domains to do the same. It's high time these people get that they deserve. They're nothing but a bunch of corporate blood sucking pond scum. If we all band together we can get the ball rolling.
i get spammed from my contact entries in the whois database, and there's not much NSI can do about that. (i.e. i wish that any and all spammers would just plain die. slowly. but i don't blame NSI for it) so why shouldn't NSI be able to place their own ads? i also think that NSI should be able to dictatorialize the .com,.org, and .net domains however they like. there has to be one final auhority for every domain, and the only TLDs that should be government interferred with are the ISO ones (.uk, .us, .ca, etc.) TLDs are NOT a right!
Oh, right. Carry on.
-- Old Man Kensey
I can set up a whois server that passes your search right through to interneic, and then strips the ads out of the return result and sends it back to you unfettered. Nifty idea, yes?
Posted by Synsthe:
i s you'll notice there's already gif 468x60 ad banners displayed there.
Where's the news? If you go to http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/who
Albeit they are merely ads for linking to another part of NSI's site, the fact that they were/are there should have been enough advance warning for anybody with multiple brain cells and synapse function to figure out that they would eventually run full fledged ad campaigns.
The problem being, no matter where they stick the ads, you can't stop them; they're not inserting the ads into the actual whois database, they're putting them on the pages and what not that display and format pieces of information from that database. So they very well could even put text ads into whois replies if they wanted to.
Ads are everywhere. You get them in snail mail constantly just like you get them through email (though notice how nobody goes and tracks down the postal company that sent it to get the sender shut down?), you see them on tv (they fit shows in between them on occasion), you get them in magazines, in the phone book, in your newspaper, you get them driving down the highway.
This particular case is not NSI being evil (though trust me, I don't like them one bit), just them jumping on the bandwagon with everybody else.
--
Mark Waterous (mark@projectlinux.org)
First of their database is barely updated nowadays so your better off using their Shared Registration Service (SRS) database for queries here.
Secondly this should be unconstitutional being that the whois database is not theirs. Maybe they should advertise that and donate the money to ICANN ooops That'd probably hurt them more then it would help them since they seem to want to monopolize the Domain Registration business.
heh the John Gotti's of the Domain registration world.
Someone should wake them up from their domination fantasies. register.com registers more domain than they do.
Maybe they should join in the adverstising business and give NSI (network stupidity inc) a run for the monopolized cash.
home sweet home
Want Root?
In the faq, under the unix section, it tells you to update your DNS server.
UNIX
Edit /etc/resolv.conf in a similar way to the following:
domain your.domain
nameserver 209.50.251.49
nameserver 209.50.251.51
It is likely there are other commands in there that you should leave in place.
Additionally, you may normally only have 3 nameserver commands. In which case you may prefer to just use our first nameserver if you have 2 already. Place ours first.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Badly designed HTML aside, here I am at http://www.networksolutions.com/, at their whois database, and I can "Search for a Web address, NIC handle, host IP, or lastname, firstname". So let's try this out.
[Network Solutions (R) the dot com people (TM)]Home | Services | Find | Help | About Us
No match for "WWW.NETWORKSOLUTIONS.COM".
Of course, if you change the query a little, you can find it, but then shouldn't they alter that whole cutesy "Search for a web address" message? Bah.
...and didn't Sun already do that whole stupid "dot com" advertising stunt?
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
But how many of us have received US Post mail shortly after we've registered a domain, etc.?? This is directly against the NSI license as I read it, yet I have the paper to prove it, right along with the name of the domain sadly mistaken as the companies name. We don't want more SPAM, how do we get this message to these folks?