Gah! What next?!

[QT]

Talk about asinine:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/16/0034210&mode=nocomment&tid=126&tid=95&tid=98&tid=99



:mad: :mad: :mad:

[TechMeridian]

Really did you think for a minute that this was above and beyond these guys?

It's now like you do not have a choice in the matter though: http://www.internic.net/alpha.html

[QT]

The begining of countless consequences:

http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/msg13665.html

[brent]

Just wait until a light goes on at Verisign and they see for how much they can sell that "feature" to companies like Microsoft.

[knightfoo]

Microsoft is going to be pretty upset .. they already tried to do this with that little "feature" of IE that redirects you to the MSN search when you type an invalid domain. It will only be a matter of time before the lawsuits become too much to handle or someone will find a nifty way to make them wish they never thought of that idea. Massive stupidity like this normally corrects itself naturally. :)

-knightfoo

[brent]

In 1969, God gave us the internet. Ever since then, the devil has been taking it away. I imagine some form of legal action will come about due to this. Afterall, litigation is the #1 industry in the US. :)

[brent]

But wait... theres more!!! Looks like the redirects now go to buydomains.com. As my grandfather would say "thats one stinky fish".

Added later: Looks like its a moving target. Last "fat thumbs" url I typed in took me to bigfoot.com.

[QT]

Interesting article on /. this morning...

"ICANN Asks VeriSign To Stop DNS Wildcarding"

I wonder if they'll actually listen. :rolleyes:

[QT]

VeriSign Finally Responds to ICANN's Advisory:

http://www.icannwatch.org/

Translation, for the doublespeak impaired:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=79562&cid=7029278

[OOagent137]

Translation, for the doublespeak impaired:

Slashdot never fails to provide that sort of translation!

[Jose]

Hope this is OK to post. I received it today via e-mail. Yes I am a customer. Which is probably why I received it:

Dear Valued Go Daddy Customer,

Have you ever needed to ask for directions while you were driving? Let's say you stopped to ask a trusted authority, like a police officer.

You'd expect that officer to be honest, right? Wouldn't you expect him or her to provide you a safe, direct route to where you needed to go? I sure would.

But what if that officer instead misdirected you to a shopping mall? A shopping mall, it turns out, that actually paid the officer for every sale that resulted?

That would be an abuse of the police officer's authority. It would be capitalizing on your misfortune.

We believe that's what VeriSign is doing with its "Site Finder" marketing scheme. We believe that it is once again abusing the power to oversee all .com and .net domains it was granted by the U.S. government.

Go Daddy is now suing in federal court to stop them.

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HERE'S HOW VERISIGN'S SCHEME CAN AFFECT YOU:
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+ It will MISDIRECT YOU FROM YOUR INTENDED DESTINATION and even MISLEAD YOU ABOUT ITS STATUS.
If you type any .com or .net address into your browser that isn't already registered, VeriSign hijacks you -- and sends you to an advertising page that they own. This can occur even when you type in a site that is registered, but is not displaying temporarily. Used to be, if you made a mistake in typing an address -- which is the usual reason for not finding a site -- you would see either a "404" error page, or a help page that your browser would generate. Now though, VeriSign has hijacked this entire process and puts up a paid-advertising page, the so-called Site Finder.

+ It will COST YOU MONEY.
Advertisers pay VeriSign to position links to their services that look similar to the misspelled address. And that means you may well find your way to a competitor, rather than to your intended destination. Simply navigating on the Internet will be more frustrating and more expensive for consumers. Companies will be forced to purchase every imaginable misspelling of their names to prevent their customers from being hijacked by Site Finder, and the cost will be passed on to you. To VeriSign, of course, these forced domain registrations just mean more revenue.

+ It will mean MORE SPAM HEADED FOR YOUR INBOX.
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) across the globe have committed valuable time and resources to developing systems that prevent spam from reaching your mailbox. One of the more successful methods checks to see whether the domain name of the inbound email resolves to an actual Web site. If it doesn't, that means the domain is fake, so your ISP doesn't let it through. Now, though, spammers can use any phony domains they want, because all fake domains will "resolve" to the Site Finder page! Go Daddy's spam filter, Spam Xploder(TM), will not be affected because it uses Bayesian filtering technology, instead of relying on the DNS servers, to determine if email is spam or not.

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We at Go Daddy feel that Site Finder amounts to an abuse; that VeriSign is misusing its registry position to gain unfair advantage over the entire Internet community. And as we did in 2002, when we sued VeriSign over its renewal scam, we're determined to stop it.

We're asking a Federal judge to issue a preliminary injunction that will halt this. If you feel, as we do, that VeriSign is once again inappropriately capitalizing on its position of authority, we urge you to email VeriSign (practices@verisign.com) and ICANN (comments@icann.org) and let them know.

Thank you for your attention and support on this matter. You can review our press release and legal complaint here https://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/pressreleases/verisign_suit.asp.

As always, thanks for being a Go Daddy customer.

Sincerely,
Bob Parsons
President
GoDaddy.com

[QT]

http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/31710.html

[QT]

Finally putting their foot down...

http://www.icann.org/correspondence/twomey-to-lewis-03oct03.htm

Another interesting article:

http://boston.internet.com/news/article.php/3087071

Privacy concern?

http://www.securityfocus.com/news/7009