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A Snag For Verisign's Suit Against ICANN 134

Dinglenuts writes "Looks like Verisign just received a setback in their lawsuit against ICANN. Verisign sued ICANN for making them take down Sitefinder, but the judge said that their case was 'awfully vague.' The extensive mischief caused by Verisign's new attempts at 'service' have been well documented on Slashdot." Reader Mz6 points out the same AP story as carried by USA Today.
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A Snag For Verisign's Suit Against ICANN

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 19, 2004 @11:40AM (#9195701)

    IANAL but ICANN doesn't give IPs, IANA does. So PTIYPASI. HTH, HAND.
  • by ForestGrump ( 644805 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2004 @11:42AM (#9195721) Homepage Journal
    "The extensive mischief caused by Verisign's new attempts at 'service' have been well documented on Slashdot."

    A sad day for justice will come when rantings of us lab monkeys will be used as evidence in court.

    -Grump
  • by Milo of Kroton ( 780850 ) <milo.of.kroton ( ... ail.com minus pi> on Wednesday May 19, 2004 @11:42AM (#9195722) Journal
    Every industry has some form of governmental regulation (except for the drug trade). Pharmaceutical companies have the FDA, why can't we create an Internet Oversight Beauro?
    • by gclef ( 96311 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2004 @11:47AM (#9195760)
      Sadly, that *is* ICANN. At least, they think so. Their original mandate was to handle the Name and Number (IP) allocations (hence the two N's in their acronym). It's grown a bit, though, as the ICANN board has pushed the bounds of their mandate.
      • If they're not doing their job, can't someone oversee them?
        • by deadlinegrunt ( 520160 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2004 @12:05PM (#9195902) Homepage Journal
          If they're not doing their job, can't someone oversee them?

          I see somebody here is a staunch supporter of big business and big government with that attitude.

          I think the ideal thing to do is replace "them" with something that actually works, not oversee "them". Just a thought.
          • by perlchild ( 582235 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2004 @12:43PM (#9196262)
            I think the ideal thing to do is replace "them" with something that actually works, not oversee "them". Just a thought.

            It's also interesting to note that an appendage of the department of commerce is acting more and more like the ruling body of a cartel, and changes to the ICANN structure/ruling entities would actually help liberate a captive market from big-player pressures, expressed outside that market, through ICANN.
            • Makes me think of this:

              A Japanese company and an American company decided to have a canoe race on the Missouri River. Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race.

              On the big day the Japanese won by a mile. Afterward, the American team became very discouraged and morally depressed. The American management decided the reason for the crushing defeat had to be found. A Management Team made up of senior management was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action

          • I see somebody here is a staunch supporter of big business and big government with that attitude.

            I think the ideal thing to do is replace "them" with something that actually works, not oversee "them". Just a thought.

            Som sort of politburo, perhaps?

        • They have not been doing their job. Verisign/Netsol have been refusing to take action about bogus domain registration information for years.

          ICANN made an announcement [icann.org] about this in 2002, and the information on the mentioned domains were still invalid in late 2003. Most of the information was updated this year, maybe to prepare for this lawsuit (to have clean hands).

          Verisign/Netsol should have had their accreditation status yanked last year!

    • US Dept. of Commerce (Score:5, Informative)

      by gorzek ( 647352 ) <gorzek@gmail.LISPcom minus language> on Wednesday May 19, 2004 @11:49AM (#9195778) Homepage Journal
      The US Department of Commerce specifically regulates what VeriSign can and can't do. For instance, they approve all new TLDs. Not sure how far their authority goes, but it seems to be pretty extensive.
      • by gclef ( 96311 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2004 @11:55AM (#9195826)
        Well, sort of. The DoC has assigned this task to ICANN. The DoC does not regulate VeriSign directly....ICANN does, under the authority delegated to it by the DoC.
      • by karl.auerbach ( 157250 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2004 @01:07PM (#9196466) Homepage
        The US Dept of Commerce has never articulated any clear source of authority for its role in these internet matters.

        Under the US system, agencies like the DoC don't have any "native" powers but rather obtain them only by explicit delegations by statutes and by executive orders (that themselves often need to go back to statutes or the native Article II powers.)

        The General Accounting Office (a branch of the US Congress) investigated the DoC's powers *twice* and found them wanting. And there have been some significant legal articles also making this point.

        In other words, ICANN is on very shakey ground if it tries to claim that its power derives from the US Dept of Commerce.

        The DoC's role over Verisign comes from a Cooperative Agreement that was to have expired six years ago but which has been extended and amendended and extended and amended at least 25 times. It is now so warped that between ICANN and the DoC, Verisign has a what amounts to a perpetual lock on .com (thanks to the attorney who formed ICANN and who has perhaps reaped more personal financial gain out of this entire mess than any other individual.) Under the ICANN contracts (which the DoC buys into) Verisign's lock is nearly unbreakable unless Verisign does somethign criminal or equally bad.
        • The US government, via ARPA and then DARPA paid Jon Postel to perform the "IANA function". Under this aegis, he, as a *part time* activity was IANA. The US government paid for this and the NSF funded cooperative agreement; from this the USG thinks it owns the legacy domain and IP space. That's their claimed source of authority.

          How commerce got it is a bit more frightening. When it became clear the cooperative agreement was going to expire the USG scrambled and had a series of "inter-agency task force" mee
          • Well, the Internet is a tad larger now than it was when Jon Postel was doing the IANA job by himself. Jon had a rare talent for getting people who were disagreeing to understand it was in their mutual interests to work things out, but he mostly had the luxury of working with people who actually wanted the Internet to work well. Even if he were still living today and running IANA, I suspect he would have had to cede authority to some sort of oversight board that had international representation.

            Realize th
            • First of all the size of the internet when this all came to a head in 1996/7 wasn't THAT big, and the size had nothing to do with Jon's problems; his problem was IANA had no legal personality; it did not exist in any legal sense, so, Jon, and not "IANA" or USC/ISI would have been the target of any lawsuits. USC was too chickenshit to give him any legal support and Don Heath of ISOC promised him a solution to this whuch begat the ill fated IAHC whaich begat ICANN. Same thing, same people just more cluelessne
              • You're certainly right about Jon's legal liability. Of course that's one of the things that the DoC people kept pointing out to him in order to get him to go along. The USG wanted control and didn't mind being coercive to get it.

                As for NSI, there's a difference between what NSI said in public and what they told their lobbyists to push for in private. Of course they weren't about to agree to a structure that would have allowed ICANN or whatever to take away their cash cow.
                • by rs79 ( 71822 )
                  As for NSI, there's a difference between what NSI said in public and what they told their lobbyists to push for in private. Of course they weren't about to agree to a structure that would have allowed ICANN or whatever to take away their cash cow.

                  One of the nice things about the ICANN meetings is you get to see where the real stuff happens - in the hallways, in the bars after hours etc. I met and stayed near NSI's lobbyist there and made sure I could eavesdrop. Their position was consistant Keith. If you
                  • We're talking about different things now, and it's too much trouble to work out the differences. I'm certainly not defending ICANN, I just realize that it's very hard to replace it with something better - there's a good chance that either root anarchy or anything that is likely to replace ICANN in the current political climate would end up being much worse.

                    But we agree on one thing: "the grays screwed up". Though I'd say it slightly differently: We missed the opportunity to put the DNS root under sound
                    • I dunno, I'm not that cynical. I don't think it would he hard at all to do better than ICANN. All you'd have to do is abide by the guiding principles laid down in the white paper ICANN was supposed to be following in the first place. The internet has many examples of projects much larger than ICANN (ferinstance the Apache project). There was little disagreement in 1996 that something else besides NSI was needed and and the camps were divided into "non profit" and "for profit" bitterly. Ironically the "non p
                    • But, this raises the point, IS it too late to do someting about it? I think not...But, to do nothing, is, I think, a cop out.

                      It's a judgement call. Sometimes even though the situation is bad, there is no course of action that will not make it worse. In those cases the only thing you can to do improve the situation is wait until a better opportunity appears. Insisting that something be done can be counterproductive.

                      I do think the alternate roots serve a valuable purpose. They demonstrate what will hap
            • Jon Postel worked on "Internet Protocol". ICANN works on "Intellectual Property". It's not the same IP at all, even though names and addresses are both part of both sides. They're much much more interested in wrangling about trademark ownership than in making anything technical work well, and the market they're trying to serve is trademark owners, not people who want interesting memorable company names.

              Managing registries of names and numbers isn't something that requires "international registration" or

        • In other words, ICANN is on very shakey ground if it tries to claim that its power derives from the US Dept of Commerce.

          In other words, the US government is on very shaky ground if it tries to claim that it has power over the international Internet. Note that the international community has at least tentatively been supportive of ICANN - because they realize that as bad as ICANN is, it's probably better than either having multiple roots (even assuming they all get along, which is unlikely) or having the
          • Why is the USG in charge of all DNS? Because you agree to it. Your use of the USG funded root servers gaurentees you will forever be a slave to whatever ICANN and the USG think you should have for domain names. For exercise, follow the money; it always leads back to some organization that starts with a capital I; they're all part of what is cynicallly referred to as the I* MLM.

            You can slag alterative roots all you want, but now that they've been running for 8 years, in daily use by a very large number of p
            • We are all slaves to many things. But to some degree we get to choose our masters. We choose the "official" root servers because we believe that, no matter how corrupt they are, the masters of those servers actually value worldwide consistency and reliable operation, and we value those attributes in DNS. In general, consistency and minimization of disruption are among the primary reasons we choose government (in spite of its corruption) over anarchy.

              That, and most of the alternative roots appear to be r
              • You're slipping Keith, Randy Bush usualy refers to me as a "dangerous psychopath", Paul Vixie refers to me as a "misguided lunatic" and never mind the fact that Vixies boss who funded the $2M of DEC's money for development of BIND is behind all that I do in this arena, as a follow on act to his creating of the back-then wildly unpopular alt newsgroups (which Vixie prediced would be the death of usenet [google.com].

                Who exactly are you referring to as "paranoid lunatics" Keith?

                The obvious technical argument to your firs
    • by Guildencrantz ( 234779 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2004 @11:54AM (#9195820)
      The problem for this is that the question comes down to whos government? The internet is an entity that extends well beyond typical political borders. ICANN (Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers) is supposed to be an international organization to take care of the peculiarities of how addresses will be assigned within this lawless realm.

      ~~Guildencrantz
    • by kunudo ( 773239 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2004 @12:11PM (#9195948)
      I, being european, would be pissed about that. Especially after stuff like this [slashdot.org]. I wouldn't want an extension of the US. govt to have even more power over the web than it has today. I suppose we could just roll our own web, I mean, the rest of the world, but that would be kinda dumb...
    • by Anonymous Coward
      Pharmaceutical companies are in the drug trade. It's a legal drug trade, but a drug trade nonetheless.
  • Since they've always handed me snags in dealing with them as a registrar.

    "Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain

    • what do you do when your registrar won't respond via email, email is their only means of contact, and your domain is expired (in the 30-day grace period)? FWIW I would never recommend PlanetDomain as a registrar. It's unquestionably one of those "you get what you pay for" issues. Saved a few $$ on the registration, but now we're paying in other, more significant ways.
  • Arghh... Sitefinder (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MoThugz ( 560556 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2004 @11:44AM (#9195737) Homepage
    Some responsibilities should NEVER be given to ANY corporations at all. Verisign nearly wreck the whole internet for us.

    If you thought domain squatters buying mispelled domains and setting popup pages on it was bad... the days of typing lkwdlgkhlhkgwq.com and GETTING Sitefinder was much worse!

    Thank God it was quite shortlived though.
    • by DoorFrame ( 22108 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2004 @11:48AM (#9195770) Homepage
      Don't worry, I just bought lkwdlgkhlhkgwq.com and I'm going to mirror the old sitefinder page. Just as a service to those who were missing it.
    • There are TLDs where that has happened for a while. Try anything in .pw [makeanyoldthingup.pw] for example. .biz too, I think. But who cares about armpit domains like those anyway?
    • by Anonymous Coward
      I always got a kick from typing things like "verisignsucks.com" and "sitefinder_is_satans_spawn.com" into the browser and watching SiteFinder come up as a response when it was still active. I hope they analyze their logs and get the message, though I admit that's unlikely.

      I know, I should get a life.
    • "the days of typing lkwdlgkhlhkgwq.com and GETTING Sitefinder was much worse!..."

      Nevermind SiteFinder - I think the next time I visit lkwdlgkhlhkgwq.com I want the computer to just give me several loud beeps, because I just fell asleep and hit my head on the keyboard again...:)
  • by millahtime ( 710421 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2004 @11:45AM (#9195740) Homepage Journal
    If they get a court case going they have a decent chance of winning because....

    They manage the .com domains so if one isn't bought they can theoritically do whatever they want with it
    And because there are other extensions doing it such as .cc
  • Awww! (Score:5, Funny)

    by RyuuzakiTetsuya ( 195424 ) <taiki@c o x .net> on Wednesday May 19, 2004 @11:45AM (#9195741)
    Poor VeriSign! They can't hijack the internet anymore. :(
    • When NSI deployed that sitefinder thing 17 other TLDS were already doing what they did.

      There are specifics in the ICANN/NSI agreement that says they will not apply rules unequally across all TLDS.

      So, ICANN's choices were to tell all TLDS to stop it, or allow them all to.

      Since ICANN has no signed agreements with other TLDS (they told them to go fuck themselves when icann asked) they couldn't do the former and didn't feel like doing the latter. So, ICANN went and violated it's own agreement.

      Of course ICAN
  • Oh the irony (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JosKarith ( 757063 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2004 @11:46AM (#9195748)
    Verisign, who jealously guard their monopoly on domains, suing ICANN for "Restraining competition"
    Christ, the guy who cleared that lawsuit must have the hugest set of brass balls in existence
    • Re:Oh the irony (Score:3, Insightful)

      by perlchild ( 582235 )
      You're explaining by courage what can best be explained by terminal cluelessness about the technical issues here.

      You're giving away undeserved karma.
  • Vague (Score:5, Funny)

    by anonicon ( 215837 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2004 @11:48AM (#9195768)
    "Verisign sued ICANN for making them take down Sitefinder, but the judge said that their case was 'awfully vague.'"

    Hey!, I'm in a smartass mood today, WTF is wrong with "awfully vague?" It seems to work for the DMCA and a lot of other bogus legislation.

    Chuck
    • Re:Vague (Score:3, Insightful)

      by PMuse ( 320639 )
      WTF is wrong with "awfully vague?" It seems to work for . . . bogus legislation.

      Judges are less than fond of "vague". Some variant of "start making sense or get out" is heard fairly often.

      Legislators OTOH find "vague" to be highly useful in trying to please more of the peopl^H^H^H^H^H contributors more of the time.
  • by kai5263499 ( 751741 ) <kaiNO@SPAMwerxltd.com> on Wednesday May 19, 2004 @11:48AM (#9195769) Homepage
    between Verisign redirecting people at the DNS level and Microsfot redirecting people at the Browser level with MSIE?

    Either way you are getting advertizements or tainted search results, and it's annoying either way.

    I guess since it's DNS level, no one can "opt out" by choosing another browser, but the average user dosen't know how to do that either...
    • by Anonymous Coward
      I guess since it's DNS level, no one can "opt out" by choosing another browser,

      You can "opt-out" by simply selecting "never search from address bar" in options. Now if they'd just quit trying to reset my home page to msn.com with every security update...

    • by Short Circuit ( 52384 ) <mikemol@gmail.com> on Wednesday May 19, 2004 @11:53AM (#9195805) Homepage Journal
      That's only true for HTTP traffic. Generating false domain names broke a lot of other services. Like checking to see if a domain existed before accepting an email address as "From" that domain.
    • but the average user dosen't know how to do that either

      Average user? AVERAGE USER?? Blast it all, man! This is Slashdot! The "average user" has no say here!
    • by damgx ( 132688 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2004 @12:06PM (#9195908)
      The internet is more then just http (webbrowsing).

      This mess up ftp, smtp nntp and other protocols as well.

      Also why should Verisign have the right to steal page view from Microsoft? (or another browser og website).
    • How about, one you can turn off with a few mouse clicks or just use a different browser? Also, as has allready been said. There is more to the internet then web pages.
    • by therblig ( 543426 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2004 @12:12PM (#9195958)
      The difference is that people don't have to choose MSIE to be their browser. I can surf the web with Firefox, but I cannot choose whether I interact with Verisign. That's a monopoly I cannot get around.

      As others have also already mentioned, it messes up far more than just web traffic. It has wreaked havoc with many anti-spam solutions. Of course, in Verisign's case (remember their annoying pop-ups), they and the spammers may be more birds of a feather than they care to admit.

    • by Mr_Silver ( 213637 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2004 @12:16PM (#9195980)
      between Verisign redirecting people at the DNS level and Microsfot redirecting people at the Browser level with MSIE?

      The higher up the level you do it, the more people you affect and the more difficult it is to get it removed if you don't want it.

      If MS do it, you can either disable it in the browser (if there is an option) or use a different browser. It only affects you.

      If Versign do it, you have no choice in the matter.


    • DNS is NOT a web-based service. We use it when we use the web to resolve hostnames to IP addresses because the IP addresses are nessesary to communicate over the network. Typing in an HTTP URL will generate a hit to a DNS server, sure, but so will using an FTP client, and so will using Outlook with an IMAP server, etc.

      Under SiteFinder, instead of getting a "DNS Not Found" error response to the DNS request, you get a re-direct response to the SiteFinder page. Therefore, as far as your FTP client knows, the
  • by hardaker ( 32597 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2004 @12:16PM (#9195979) Homepage
    The Internet Architecture Board [iab.org] has recently written a document (draft-iab-identities [ietf.org]) which covers how DNS names are used as identities and why doing things like what verisign was trying to do is a bad thing. They don't outright specify this particular battle, but talk about it in a more generic sense.
    • Here is the excerpt from section 4.3 of that draft that applies (not so generically, I'd say!) to SiteFinder:

      Having the DNS server doing a "search", undertaking "fuzzy matching" or inferring some additional context to a query that guides the server to choose a particular response is ill-advised. The DNS server can not know the context of the query, nor should it guess what the DNS response is to be used for. It is always tempting to assume that the response is to be used by the most popu

  • by innerweb ( 721995 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2004 @12:20PM (#9196006)
    ...And find a company to replace Verisign for Verisign's responsibilities. That might send a clear message...

    InnerWeb

    • by kalislashdot ( 229144 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2004 @12:27PM (#9196086) Homepage
      Exactly. I am confused by all this. I remember back in the day the NSF ran the Internet. They contracted an outside vendor, Network Solutions, to run the database of somina names. Very common practice for goverment stuff.

      Later ICANN was created to take over the Internet from NSF. Versign bought Network Solutions. Differnt people, same situation. ICANN runs the Internet and contracts out to Verisign to run the database. I figure somewhere they is a contract that says what they can and cannot do.

      ICANN needs to actually do something like revoke Verisigns contract. Get a new company and say "we want XYZ, nothing more nothing less" "for your trouble you can charge what ever you want for people to register domain names".

      Plain and simple, I just don't get it.
      • It's also worth mentioning that NSI/Internic changed the domain prices and stole millions of dollars from the community and had the courts strike down their fee as an illegal tax. Did they ever return any of the money they collected back to the proper people? Not that I know.
        • The NSF contracted 3 companies to run the RS, DS and IS fucntions of "the internic project" AT&T got DS, Government Solusions got RS, General Atomics tgot IS. GA failed miserably, and GS got RS. GS changed it's name to Network Solutions; remeber at the time it sold network software and the domreg stuff accounted for a truly miniscule portion of their revenue.

          When Joshua Glasner (?) wrote that article in Wired it began the great domain goldrush, domregs went asymtotic; domreg latency went from 3 days t
      • ICANN can no longer revoke Verisign's franchise - way back in 2001 (I think) ICANN's "attorney" went out privately arranged a new contract in which Verisign would get .com in perpetuity in exchange for giving up .org (which they have done). ICANN's DNS policy body said that this is a bad thing, but ICANN's board, ever in thrall to that attorney, adopted that contract (I voted against.)

        In order for Versign to lose its rights to .com under that contract it would have to do some things much, much, much more
        • Karl,

          I want to let you know, publicly, that I have totally appreciated your efforts at (trying) to work with ICANN and the whole process and fiasco of the elected board members at ICANN.

          Most of the problems relating to domain names would have been resolved had ICANN been much more responsive to ordinary internet users. Yeah, a "democratic" ICANN would have injected a political flavor to the internet that currently isn't here, but I would prefer that over the current self-appointed monarchy that seems to
  • dammit, they're using the soviet offense.

    In Soviet Russia, the monopoly sue you!
  • VeriSign controls the computers that contain the master list of domain name suffixes, such as ".com" and ".fr."

    Verisign controls .fr ccTLD? Since when? I thought it was AFNIC (www.afnic.fr) whol looked after .fr?

    Tk
    • Verisign controls .fr ccTLD? Since when? I thought it was AFNIC (www.afnic.fr) whol looked after .fr?

      Verisign Global Registry Services [verisign-grs.com] manages the root zone, which does indeed contain both .com and .fr. Verisign GRS also manages the .com and .net zones, and AFNIC manages the .fr zone, but the root zone is the absolute top of the hierarchy above top-level domains.
  • by mabu ( 178417 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2004 @01:52PM (#9196827)
    1. Unused domain space is just that: unused, and un-owned by anyone. It's unethical to take over IP space that is un-allocated.

    2. Verisign is providing a service that is very specific; they should not be allowed to change the terms of the services they provide without having to put the whole TLD system back up for bid. Since they could use this to profit, all other root servers and other companies who want to compete for this should have a chance. This is the same situation NSI/Verisign found themselves in in the 1990s when they started (illegally) charging for domain registration. The company has a history of "changing the rules" and exploiting others.

    3. Redirecting unused IP space is a huge logistical problem for other systems online; it interferes with all services including ftp and mail - not just the web.

    4. It's a big security problem. Who knows where mail for misspelled domain names ends up going?

    5. The Internet is an International medium. We don't need another arrogant move on the part of US corporate America to further piss off the rest of the world and show that the Americans are hypocritics interested in exploiting resouces they don't have a right to.

    6. If Verisign re-implements their unethical scheme, thousands of systems will modify their DNS to work around it. This could potentially undermine the design of the network to be able to effeciently route around problems and possibly spawn rogue root servers that would be embraced by the ISP community at the expense of the network's flexibility.

  • by dacarr ( 562277 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2004 @03:07PM (#9197514) Homepage Journal
    They'll probably have to sue ISC and these guys [cr.yp.to] as well, since there are patches out there to keep Sitefinder out.
  • the judge said that their case was 'awfully vague.'

    This is the judge we need for the SCO case. With someone like this, this farce could have been over by now.

  • ... of what court wants, the judge should have just given them a list of law firms they might have wanted to hire instead. Put some ADs there too.
  • or is this also the site finder service in question.. when a end user visits http://é.com/ [.com] they will get a verisign page. Is this the service in question??
    • Damn, that works for me. Any domain name with a character from about U+00A1 to U+00FF like "http://www.windows®.com/" (slashdot mangles it in links, copy+paste) resolves to 198.41.1.35, and either gives me a not found page or tries to install some verisign backdoor on my machine (see item 11 [verisign-grs.com])

      Does anyone mirror the gTLDs so that I don't have to deal with continuous bullshit like this?

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