An Internet search company on Thursday filed a $100 million antitrust lawsuit against VeriSign Inc., accusing the Web address provider of hijacking misspelled and unassigned Web addresses with a service it launched this week. VeriSign's new SiteFinder service takes searches for ".com" and ".net" Web addresses that are not spelled correctly or have not yet been registered and redirects them to a VeriSign Web page that includes options and pay-for-placement topic links. Since it was launched on Monday, the SiteFinder service has drawn widespread criticism from Internet users who complain that VeriSign has overstepped its authority. However, VeriSign says it is merely offering a convenient service.
The lawsuit filed in federal court in Orlando, Florida, alleges antitrust violations, unfair competition and violations of the Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act and asks the court to order VeriSign to put a halt to the service, said Robert Hart, a spokesman for Popular Enterprises LLC, the Orlando-based parent company of search provider Netster.com. According to the lawsuit, Mountain View, California-based VeriSign has been using its position as the keeper of the master list of all Web addresses ending in ".com" and ".net," also called domain names, to unfair advantage.
News source: Reuters
The lawsuit filed in federal court in Orlando, Florida, alleges antitrust violations, unfair competition and violations of the Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act and asks the court to order VeriSign to put a halt to the service, said Robert Hart, a spokesman for Popular Enterprises LLC, the Orlando-based parent company of search provider Netster.com. According to the lawsuit, Mountain View, California-based VeriSign has been using its position as the keeper of the master list of all Web addresses ending in ".com" and ".net," also called domain names, to unfair advantage.
News source: Reuters
VeriSign's Site Finder, launched on Monday, has drawn heated criticism for hijacking mistyped Web addresses. Instead of getting an error message, Web surfers who mistype ".com" and ".net" Web addresses are redirected to the Site Finder service, which then offers a list of likely alternatives, some of which are paid-placement links. Critics complain the new service gives VeriSign too much control over online traffic and allows it to profit from an essential monopoly over ".com" and ".net" names. VeriSign is charged by the U.S. government with running the ".com" and ".net" domains, and directs much of the traffic on the Internet.
However, the ISC is about to undercut the Site Finder service with a patch to its BIND software.
BIND runs on about 80 percent of the Internet's domain name servers -- the machines that translate human-readable Web addresses like www.wired.com into machine-readable Internet addresses used by the Internet's vast network of computers."
The patch will be released by the end of Tuesday, said Paul Vixie, ISC's president.
"The phone has been ringing off the hook with deeply unhappy customers," he said. "We don't have a political ax to grind. Whether VeriSign should or should not have done this is not for us to decide. But we have to respond to our customers who are demanding it."
Vixie said that ISC's customers -- typically ISPs and large enterprises -- needed a fix because VeriSign's Site Finder broke their spam filters.
Vixie said a lot of spam spoofs the "from" domain, and that many ISP-level spam filters check whether incoming e-mail is from a valid domain or not. Instead of generating errors, the spam filter checks are instead being rerouted to the Site Finder service, and therefore appear to originate from a legitimate domain.
Vixie said the ISC's customers aren't too concerned with advertising. "They don't want to help spammers. It's the lack of a viable spam-detection mechanism they're worried about. They are concerned about spam, not advertising," Vixie said.
VeriSign did not respond requests for comment.
I hate it when I agree with a lawsuit, but what VeriSign has done is utterly insane.
-Raptor
Making this page for Server not found errors is insane because I much prefer it when Firebird pops up a warning message that it doesn't exist so it doesn't have to load anything in the main browser windows, and at least with Internet Explorer's Server not found error, it gives helpful hints on how to correct the problem, for instance it gives hints like: "Click the Refresh button, or try again later.", "If you typed the page address in the Address bar, make sure that it is spelled correctly." and "Click the Back button to try another link."
If I wanted to use sitefinder, I would have edited the registry to do so.
Anyone else unnafected?
Each and every single owner of a domain should be upset about this.... now instead of a 'page not found', where a visitor would simply correct their typo, they are met with Verisign's page, which may entice the visitor to follow another link and head elsewhere.
example: www.noewin.net
... and the first suggestion is to type "neowin.net". You wouldn't get this hint *without' VeriSign's page.
I agree that it's a stupid page, but it can be discussed if it makes it harder to reach the page you wished to. Now you don't have to correct your typo anymore. You just have to click on the correct link. Which is a GOOD feature.
You have a very short-sided view of the 'net if you find anything appealing about this. What other company could litterally get 20-MILLION paid advertisements displayed on the 'net for FREE each and everyday. Verisign is abusing their gov't allowed monopoly. The TLD monitoring should be in the hands of a NON-PROFIT organization. Since verisign has take over N$ they have repeated had to have their wrist slapped by the FTC for unfair business practices, from sending out invoices to competitor's clients to trick them into changing over to NetSol to Literally hijacking and holding domain names hostage.
Verisign broke many spam filters with this move, it literally got millions of daily visits stolen from Google, MSN, and other web sites that customers may have CHOSEN to use. And let's not forget that say someone sends you e-mail at a mistyped domain (I.E. you@somdomain.com instead of you@somedomain.com) prior to sending the mail back as rejected, they keep a copy of this message - and can do whatever they wish too with it.
YOUR USE OF THE VERISIGN SERVICES IS AT YOUR OWN RISK. IF YOU ARE DISSATISFIED WITH ANY OF THE MATERIALS, RESULTS OR OTHER CONTENTS OF THE VERISIGN SERVICES OR WITH THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS, OUR PRIVACY STATEMENT, OR OTHER POLICIES, YOUR SOLE REMEDY IS TO DISCONTINUE USE OF THE VERISIGN SERVICES OR OUR SITE.
Don't like what they are gathering about you, too bad the TOS of the site require you agree with it. because your (ALL CAPS) SOLE REMEDY is too never mistype a domain - or visit a domain who may be in the middle of a server reboot or upgrade.
This is also the start of a slippery slope - bravo on the lawsuit - if I had the $ to pay the legal fees I'd be in court with them myself.
I agree that it's a stupid page, but it can be discussed if it makes it harder to reach the page you wished to. Now you don't have to correct your typo anymore. You just have to click on the correct link. Which is a GOOD feature.
Not from a website owner's point of view. Yes, the correct domain is listed in the suggestions.... but so are others... which like I stated, may entice the visitor to head elsewhere.
I would rather see a page with suggestions for my mistyped URL than try figuring out the correct spelling for the URL. (Not that it happens very often).
That fact they use the page for advertising purposes is besides the point.
Edit: I take it back.
I tried some mistyped URLs and found that MSN Search always returns with very good URL suggestions,
but Verisign results do not always come with good sugggestions.
As a result, Verisign has replaced MSN's search superior results with a inferior one and made it tougher to get to the right URL
Last edited by 34759 on 19 Sep 2003 - 05:54
PLUS - STOP THINKING THAT THE INTERNET ENDS AT YOUR WEB BROWSER! The web is just a PART OF THE NET! Many peices of software require DNS checks to return true or false - now all .com and .net adresses return TRUE... this breaks literally thousands of peices of software. Verisigns own white papers on this "tool" acknowledge that they anticipated this and said "so what" and turned it on with no warning any way. This "tool" has already cost many progammers days of programming to get around. That's like deploying So-big and you go to jail for that kind of thing.
Anyone else unnafected?
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