Verisign's Lawsuit Against ICANN Dismissed 190
emtboy9 writes "Internet domain name registry VeriSign just can't seem to convince anyone that redirecting misspelled Web addresses to its own site is a good thing. A federal district court judge on Thursday threw out VeriSign's legal arguments that ICANN's ban on this tactic amounted to a violation of U.S. antitrust law. VeriSign, which runs the master database for .com and .net addresses, had argued that its competitors had succeeded in stymying VeriSign's plans for its Site Finder service by providing advice to the board of directors of ICANN, or the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers."
This seems familiar... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This seems familiar... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:This seems familiar... (Score:2, Funny)
But seeing VeriSign lose reputability in the business world is fine, too.
Re:This seems familiar... (Score:5, Funny)
-SCO
yes.. because it was... (Score:5, Interesting)
Those guys actually tried to pull that...
I wonder how much stake overture had in that.. No journalist has ever approached them to find out their role in that story.
a service indeed..
Re:yes.. because it was... (Score:2)
do you have nothing better for you time?
honestly? I had formatting on extrans or something and it did that..
sheesh, pull your head out of your ass
I am wishing for ninjas [mediaicon.org]
^^ you probably inspired that cartoon.
Re:yes.. because it was... (Score:2, Funny)
plagiarizing (Score:4, Informative)
Re:plagiarizing (Score:2, Funny)
Re:plagiarizing (Score:2, Funny)
Re:plagiarizing (Score:2, Funny)
Re:plagiarizing (Score:2)
Re:plagiarizing (Score:3, Informative)
Re:plagiarizing (Score:2)
Re:plagiarizing (Score:2)
I've seen my own comments j
Re:plagiarizing (Score:2, Informative)
That's what quotes are for (or in this case, likely single sub-quotes). They're fun and easy to use! Something like:
emtboy9 writes "Saw this on new.com.com: 'Internet domain name registry VeriSign...'"
Re:plagiarizing (Score:2)
They live off of traffic, and the stories are a very clearly the meat of their business. It is distributed with profit.
After a long drought out legal common sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe the knowledge of the judges, lawyers and whatnot is finally catching up with the times, and they are displaying some comprehension of the high tech fields on which they're ruling.
One can only hope this trend of understanding continues.
Re:After a long drought out legal common sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
and extends to the patent office.
Re:After a long drought out legal common sense... (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe the lawyers are catching up, but it has always been a requirement that a judge make a decision based on law. If he makes a decision you don't agree with, then somewhere there's a law that you don't agree with. If he makes a decision that you DO agree with, it's because there is a law somewhere that you DO agree with.
I wish people would stop demonizing judges, or putting them on pedestals. They don't have much wiggle room for a "good" or "bad" decision. Their function is to interpret the law, even if they don't like what it says. All they can do is mitigate the damages according to what is allowed by law.
Re:After a long drought out legal common sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
Judges in the the US are bound not only by the statutes, but by the interpretations of those statutes by higher courts. SCO, to choose a random example, is having their head handed to them because they have neither law nor fact on their side. IBM has both and they know how to use it.
Re:After a long drought out legal common sense... (Score:2)
Why does this not surprise me?
Re:After a long drought out legal common sense... (Score:3, Insightful)
Those carry MAJOR penalties...It's illegal to use the court system to conduct a vendetta for which there is no legal reason for doing so. I.e. SCO is talking out of their ass and using the courts to do it, that's not legal.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:After a long drought out legal common sense... (Score:3, Interesting)
Judges have been known to go against pre-existing common laws and law based on differing circumstances, though this can be related to my first point.
Re:After a long drought out legal common sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
Assuming that the laws they're basing their decisions on in the first place are just, that's a decent system. If the original laws are crap, then you get new crap laws based on the old ones (until someone finds the lot unconstitutional and throws them out).
Judges are human, just like the rest of us. They have good and bad days, they come in varying degrees of intelligence, and varying degrees of ignorance. And they aren't cookie-cutters when it comes to their decisions...their understanding and experience can easily affect their judgements.
Re:After a long drought out legal common sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, judges are not cookie cutters. It's very difficult for them to know all laws in the area of which they make judgments. That's why we have lawyers. If a lawyer can't correctly argue the case, then the judge may make a decision that could later be overturned. But to say that judges are understanding technology better is a bit silly. It's the lawyers who have to make their case and argue the law in their favor. The judges decision is constrained to that which is on the books, and that which was presented in court.
Re:After a long drought out legal common sense... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:After a long drought out legal common sense... (Score:2)
Re:After a long drought out legal common sense... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:After a long drought out legal common sense... (Score:2)
Of course, it is possible for good law, i.e., well-written law, to lead to the same violations of rights
Re:After a long drought out legal common sense... (Score:4, Interesting)
If only this same judge could magically get even five minutes with the patent folks and teach them a thing or two about a thing or two. We should be so lucky.
----
Re: (Score:2)
Wait a minute... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wait a minute... (Score:2)
I'm dyslexic, and it actually took me 3 or 4 tries before I could tell what was wrong with that
Would work... (Score:4, Interesting)
But then VeriSign wouldn't make as much money!
Re:Would work... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Would work... (Score:3, Informative)
If it wasn't for that other company stepping in and purchasing net sol, they'd probably still be together.
Hell, verisign still owns a minority interest in net sol and its subsidiaries.
Re:Would work... (Score:2)
Re:Would work... (Score:2)
Re:Would work... (Score:3, Interesting)
There was an "intellectual infrastructure" fund levy added by the NSF - this was to keep the IETF process "pure" in light of more commercialization of the various I* organizations. It was to be used for paying people to attent conferences, research, stuff like that. Congress pilfered it and spent it on Internet2 benefitting the organization headed by the newly appointed head of ICANN. Just coincidence I'm sure.
Misspellins (Score:5, Funny)
Coming soon... (Score:5, Funny)
Please visit <a href="http://www.verisign.com/">this super awesome site</a> to find what you're looking for.
Re:Coming soon... (Score:3, Funny)
Coming soon: VeriSign to rename itself "ICANT".
Re:Coming soon... (Score:3, Funny)
I know it will be modded redundant, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Boy, I don't get to say that too often....
Re:I know it will be modded redundant, but... (Score:2)
Re:I know it will be modded redundant, but... (Score:2)
What is actually scary is that we are all surprised that common sense broke in... Common sense should be the rule, not the exception... but then, IANAL, so I don't know much about all those laws thingies and all...
Re:I know it will be modded redundant, but... (Score:2)
Re:I know it will be modded redundant, but... (Score:2)
Unfortunately, your happiness with the US justice system is ill-founded. From the article:
What? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
When Stephen Wolff privatied the NSF backbone and uunet, sprint etc had an excuse to exist, Wolff simply overlooked the fact the domain/ip stuff was still in government control.
The original plans were to create lots of others NSI's. Postel in 96 wanted 300 new TLDS to compete with NSI; tradictionally the net solves problems of monopoly by the creation of additional resources, not regulation, but, the trademark attornies saw ICANN as a convenient stranglehold and combined with the tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars big busines have paid for washington lobbyits to exert influence there is no real competion for NSI, jsut additional sales channels. Unless of course you think
It's unfortunate that todays decision, while highly regarded, asssits ICANN in it's feature creep; it's scope is supposed to be a narrow technical mandate, and they've prevented NSI from doing what dozens of other tlds have done for years.
TO find the real motivation behind this, and no it's not NXDOMAIN - follow the money.
Re:What? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What? (Score:2)
Sorry, you're a little backwards. Network Solutions operated the Registry for
Re:What? (Score:2)
There has to be one central Registry for each TLD, to make sure different people can't register the same domain, and to operate the authoritative nameservers for that TLD. The
Re:What? (Score:2)
Nope.
and the US Department of Commerce is the organization ultimately responsible for managing them
Tangentially. Congress is responsibe, it's delegated to the DoC.
Since the Commerce Dept would prefer not to handle this themselves
They wouldn't know how.
they contracted with a private company (Network Solutions)
NSI was doing this years before the DoC got their grubby paws on it.
Since this wasn't going so well and different o
If you get a domain wrong... (Score:2, Interesting)
Its not like it would be that hard to do.
Re:If you get a domain wrong... (Score:2)
Re:If you get a domain wrong... (Score:2)
Re:If you get a domain wrong... (Score:3, Informative)
If you get a domain wrong, the god damn browser should take you to google or whatever search engine you specified under some settings within your browser.
Yes, the browser should be able to do something like what you describe. MSIE does, and I'm pretty sure somewhere out there are Mozilla/Firefox extensions to do the same thing. It would be even better if the browser can do it in a configurable way - let you pick the search engine, let you turn the feature off if you want to see the error messages, and
Re:If you get a domain wrong... (Score:3, Informative)
Its not like it would be that hard to do.
It is if Verisign returns a page which contains a code saying that the correct page has been found, but instead substitutes its own content (which is what it is doing).
Phillip.
best example of this (Score:4, Interesting)
CB
Re:best example of this (Score:2)
vn
I miss return codes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I miss return codes (Score:3, Informative)
Then you can have your return codes back the way you want.
Re:I miss return codes (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I miss return codes (Score:4, Informative)
we use I.E and if I type in a URL that doesn't work I get taken to msn search page, does that mean the server is down, doesn't exist or what?
Tools -> Internet Options -> Advanced -> Search from the Address bar -> "Do not search from the Address bar" -> thank you; drive through
Re:I miss return codes (Score:2, Interesting)
Tools -> Internet Options -> Advanced -> Browsing -> Uncheck the "Show Friendly..." boxes
Re:I miss return codes (Score:3, Insightful)
Only if the server was resolvable, you mean. In the event of an unresolvable URL, what *I'd* like to see (and no browser in my experience has ever done this) is pop up an error:
ERROR: The URL [http://badurl.com] could not be processed because [badurl.com] could not be resolved. DNS returned: NXDOMAIN
I remember meaningful error messages, too. I wish there were more of them. Just tell me what happen
Meaningful error messages (Score:3, Interesting)
"No such domain exists" - the TLD servers returned NXDOMAIN
"The domain exists but the authoritative servers are unreachable" - domain has been properly delegated by the parent zone but the nameservers are off the air
"The domain is not set up properly" - the domain has been properly delegated and the authoritative nameservers answer with proper NS records but no A record can be found.
And so on a
Re:I miss return codes (Score:3, Informative)
While this is an inconvinience ( a "service" according to VeriSign, heh), this wasn't the major problem that a fundemental change to the top level DNS hierarchy was causing.
According to RFC 2616 (HTTP/1.1) [w3.org], each response to an HTTP request is responded too with first a status code, then content [w3.org]. Therefore, all VeriSign had to do to fix the 404/502 problem would be to return all SiteFinder pages as status code 404. (Disclaimer: I am not aware if they actually did or not). If that was implemented, browsers c
I think I speak for everyone on the planet.... (Score:4, Funny)
fuck you, verisign
Re:I think I speak for everyone on the planet.... (Score:3, Insightful)
An actual benefit to Sitefinder (Score:5, Informative)
This would have indirectly lead to a benefit, because it would make it that much easier to switch to an alternate root by changing your own configuration in one place, or otherwise ignore other "cunning schemes" Verisign might come up with.
Re:An actual benefit to Sitefinder (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:An actual benefit to Sitefinder (Score:2)
Hi Peter;
One other possible answer is "you can't rely on NXDMAIN"; you couldn't before NSI did this of course as at the time 13 other TLDS were dong it from as far back as 3 years prior. Perhaps another heuristic was indicated? Perhaps "what does this tld do with a known bad name query" ?
There is also a non-zero faction of people that found the "service" usefull. "Did you mean
Re:An actual benefit to Sitefinder (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, yes, and there's SLDs and 3LDs that had used wildcard A records long before that. I've got an SLD that does it, for that matter.
But... there's a big difference between a TLD that's been handed off lock stock and NS records to a vanity domain registrar, that's run as a private company, that might as well be a SLD as far as its
Re:An actual benefit to Sitefinder (Score:2)
Ok, it's the wrong way to do it. But it could be made to work. (cf. Clarks law)
Verisign certainly had the ability to do it as evidenced by the fact they did do it.
ICANN setting policy is the larger issue here and while I'm inclined to agree with you on the technical issues the question arises is it better to have Verisign win to keep ICANN within their intended scope? That's a tough call.
If it turns out one day ICANN dr
Re:An actual benefit to Sitefinder (Score:2)
Not by Verisign. By Microsoft, yes, but not by Verisign. Verisign can not do it without breaking existing systems, because it is technically impossible for a DNS server to tell whether a request is the result of an HTTP request or an SMTP request or anything else.
Verisign certainly had the ability to do it as evidenced by the fact they did do it.
They don't have the ability to do it right. And they don't have the right to do it wrong.
ICANN setting policy is the larger issu
Re:An actual benefit to Sitefinder (Score:2)
As for keeping NSI in scope show me where it says they can't do this.
So you got rid of the wolves?
Re:An actual benefit to Sitefinder (Score:2)
Verisign doesn't own the domain they wildcarded, they're not responsible for damage, they're not capable of it. Good lord, man, you want to talk about a slippery slope: if NSI or Verisign owns "com" then they are *entitled* to do all the nasty
Re:I think I speak for everyone on the planet.... (Score:2)
Yes, it limited ICANN's powers to it's original intended technical focus, not policy. There's more trademark attornys inside the ICANN machine than you probbaly realize, and if ICANN controlls damn near everything something like this [songbird.com] should make you a little nervous.
As I understand it... (Score:5, Informative)
ICANN then said to Verisign: "Oh no you don't. Your contract is just to maintain a couple of databases. You don't suddenly own the net." And so, predictably, Verisign went to court to plead it's so-called case. Just as predictably, they lost.
It's nice when things work out like they should.
Re:As I understand it... (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Remember when the day the internet died (Score:2, Interesting)
When private corporation accounted for over half of what was and content on the Internet.
I think it was 1997 or 1998.
Sniff.
Re:Remember when the day the internet died (Score:3, Informative)
This was decided on the law, not the technology (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd make a confident guess that the "basis" for this suit is a Supreme Court opinion from the 80s ("Hydrolevel") saying basically that standards-setting organizations can't allow themselves to become a tool for conspiratorial members who have an anti-competitive agenda.
VeriSign tried to make a case that ICANN's decision reflected a bias in the structure of the organization. That's really a question about the ICANN bureaucracy and the objectivity of the decision-making process. Obviously the judge approved of ICANN's actions. But I don't think that approval has anything to do with the actual merits of the decision, but rather the procedure used to reach it.
Bad vs. Good (Score:2)
Buzzzzzzzzzz! We're sorry, but that's incorrect.
Does ICANN still get cut of the reg fee? (Score:5, Funny)
I can just picture the look on the face of the Verisign employee opening a bill with a big infinity sign in the amount column.
-Em
Re:Like it really matters.... (Score:4, Funny)
I see - once they owned Verizon, they could cut off Verisign's phone service and then use it as leverage to get them to turn it down. Brilliant.
Re:Like it really matters.... (Score:2)
Re:All Hail Judge Matz! (Score:2)
Re:All Hail Judge Matz! (Score:2)
No more than the fact that the US government is a monopoly bothers me.
Re:All Hail Judge Matz! (Score:2)
I don't get you guys. Nor everybody downloads music and cares about the RIAA, but almsot everybody on the net uses a domain name. And nobody seems to care it's now in the hands of the same guys.
Re:Plagirized (Score:2)
Re:verisign (Score:2)
Re:verisign (Score:2, Informative)
Re:verisign (Score:2)
Oh, so you worked for marketing?
I did a consulting gig there writing RRP diagnostics. Their senior tech people are as good as they come. Their marketing people were from a different planet.