Re: [alac] Redirection of non-existing domain names

[Wendy Seltzer <wendy@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Seconded.  Perhaps we could invite technical commentary on how this 
redirection affects DNS queries that expect particular behavior when 
a name is unregistered -- it's not just about the trademark holders.

More at <http://kevinmurphy.blogspot.com/CWire052103.html> (found via 
Bret's http://icann.blog.us thanks to Thomas's aggregator 
<http://aggregator.does-not-exist.org/>).

--Wendy

At 10:37 +0800 5/21/03, Dr Xue Hong wrote:
> Agree! Very important!
>
> Hong
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Vittorio Bertola" <vb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <alac@xxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2003 5:47 PM
> Subject: [alac] Redirection of non-existing domain names
>
>
> >  http://www.icannwatch.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/19/1253205&mode=nested
> >
> >  IcannWatch has a story about the .biz registry automatically
> >  redirecting requests for non-existing domain names to an arbitrary
> >  host chosen by itself (in this case, a pay-per-click search engine).
> >  This is not the first case (something similar happened with .com a few
> >  months ago).
> >
> >  Of course, answering "yes, it exists and it is this one" (+ pointer to
> >  registry-chosen website) rather than "no, it does not exist" when I
> >  ask the registry for a non-existing domain name is, in my opinion,
> >  highly deceiving for final users and opens all kinds of potential
> >  problems (from consumer frauds to trademark violation) - apart from
> >  violating technical standards. As someone points out, if you by
> >  mistake type www.googgle.biz you get a search engine as you would
> >  expect - but it is not Google.
> >
> >  If you share my views, we might emit a simple statement that asks
> >  ICANN to ensure that such episodes do not happen again unless specific
> >  policy is made on the matter (policy which, in my opinion, should
> >  absolutely and explicitly forbid this kind of behaviour).
> >
> >  Opinions?
> >  --
> >  vb.                  [Vittorio Bertola - vb [at] bertola.eu.org]<---
>  > -------------------> http://bertola.eu.org/ <-----------------------


--
--
Wendy Seltzer -- wendy@xxxxxxxxxxx || wendy@xxxxxxx
Staff Attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/seltzer.html