VeriSign Granted a Patent Covering SiteFinder

An anonymous reader writes "Remember VeriSign's SiteFinder? Turns out that a couple of months back VeriSign was granted a patent on resolving unregistered domains. This came about thanks to its acquisition of eNic, operator of the .CC Domain. How long before Verizon, Earthlink, and OpenDNS are hit up for licensing fees?"

This is a useful patent for a change.

[Anonymous Coward]

It will dissuade ISPs from implementing SiteFinder-like DNS abuses.

Oh the Humanity

[DECS]

Maybe we should patent REALLY BAD IDEAS to prevent them from spreading. Of course, it's hard to imagine in advance that ISPs and a company like VeriSign would make a business from poisoning and subverting DNS.

Flash Wars: Adobe in the History and Future of Flash [roughlydrafted.com]

That might be a good thing...

[Whatanut]

If it stops DNS providers from using this practice... I'm all for it.

Good!

[the pickle]

Hopefully Verisign will use this patent to bludgeon this abominable practise to death at ISPs and OpenDNS.

p

This COULD be a good thing, done properly

[v1]

Imagine verisign charging an absolutely absurd amount for their licensing. I mean totally out of line, like $1M/month. Don't want to pay licensing? Don't infringe.

That would dramatically reduce the amount of this DNS perversion going on.

Not that this is going to happen, but it's an interesting prospect to think about. Heaven forbid the system be taken advantage of to the benefit of the people.

Re:Many Reasons this is Appalling

[billstewart]

It's stupid, but that doesn't mean nobody's ever done it - my ranting is as grumpy as it is because Verisign did it and several other sets of people have done it since then. Verisign's attempt was really egregious, since they're the main registrar for .com and .net, and ICANN yelled at them until they stopped (one of the few times I think ICANN has really done the Right Thing.) Most of the other people who've done it are ISPs (who shouldn't do that, but you can always set your system to point to some other DNS resolver, and they're at least not the Registrar.)

OpenDNS is more interesting - they're also doing things like offering to block known phishing sites, and while they're still Technically Wrong, you're not going to use them without either deliberately choosing to do so (or having your ISP use them.)

Re:That might be a good thing...

[Antique Geekmeister]

Are we discusing the same Verizon? The one that made every single failed lookup on DNS for the *.com domain, which htey manage, resolve to their advertising pages? It broke a huge number of DNS testing tools, and caused all sorts of nasty traffic problems.

The chance of Verisign blocking this kind of behavior, except to protect the turf so that only they can do it, is so small as to be the same of making SCO admit they lied about owning UNIX.