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The Internet

NSI sells registrant info. Again. 108

Posted by Hemos from the fun-with-our-profiles dept.
Well, it appears that a number of you noticied NSI's latest escapade. Yes, this time our friends have decided to create company profiles of all registrants - including addresses, ownership, number of employees, years in business, annual sales, and phone and facsimile numbers. Mmm...I thought spam was bad enough. Who the heck is the . in .com? Um-a bunch of you needed to be told this was a joke (the last sentence). Sarcasm, folks.
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NSI sells registrant info. Again. More

NSI sells registrant info. Again.

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  • Legal in US, not in EU (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is legal in the US. Any information they collected about you in any way can be sold, traded, etc. unless they explicitly agreed not to do so.

    Under the new EU Privacy Directive, on the other hand, this is strictly illegal.

    (I spent a semester researching on-line privacy issues in a class)

    - pmitros

  • Sample Report: NSOL (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Perhaps this is what you should expect a sample report to look like. All the information below is available at no charge, from public sources, over the Internet.

    NETWORK SOLUTIONS INC.

    Registered URL: http://www.netsol.com [netsol.com]

    Stock Ticker: NSOL

    Address:
    505 Huntmar Park Drive
    Herndon, VA 20170

    EXECUTIVES AND DIRECTORS:

    Michael A. Daniels

    Position: Chairman of the Board, Acting Chief Executive Officer

    Age: 53

    Class A Shares as of 3/12/1999: 29,560

    Bio: Has served as Chairman of the Board of Network Solutions since 1995 and as Acting Chief Executive Officer of Network Solutions since November 1998. Since 1986, Mr. Daniels has served in various positions with SAIC and has served as a Sector Vice President and Sector Manager for the Technology Applications Sector of SAIC since 1993. Prior thereto, Mr. Daniels served as a Group Senior Vice President of SAIC from 1991 to 1993. Mr. Daniels received a B.S. and an M.A. from Northwestern University and received a J.D. from the University of Missouri School of Law.

    Robert J. Korzeniewski

    Position: Chief Financial Officer, Acting Chief Operating Officer

    Age: 42

    Class A Shares as of 3/12/1999: 25,842

    1998 Sal: $165,462, Bon: $90,000, plus other compensation including options

    Bio: Has served as Chief Financial Officer of Network Solutions since March 1996 and as Acting Chief Operating Officer of Network Solutions since November 1998. From 1987 until October 1997, Mr. Korzeniewski held a variety of senior financial positions with SAIC and served as a Corporate Vice President for Administration of SAIC from 1989 until 1997. Mr. Korzeniewski is a Certified Public Accountant and received a B.S. in Business Administration from Salem State College.

    Bruce L. Chovnick

    Position: Senior Vice President and General Manager, Internet Technology Services

    Age: 39

    Class A Shares as of 3/12/1999: 4,294

    1998 Sal: $181,730, Bon: $65,000, plus other compensation including options

    Resides: 19209 Autumn Maple Ln, Gaithersburg, MD 20879, MONTGOMERY CO
    Residential Phone: 301-977-3776

    Bio: Has served as Senior Vice President and General Manager, Internet Technology Services of Network Solutions since September 1997. From October 1993 until September 1997, Mr. Chovnick served in various executive leadership roles with General Electric Information Services, Inc., an electronic commerce company, and, most recently, he served as Vice President of its Global Internet Solutions business. Prior to that he was a Senior Manager of IBM Corporation, a computer systems, software, networking systems and storage devices manufacturer, from January 1984 to September 1993. Mr. Chovnick received a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Florida.

    Jonathan W. Emery

    Position: Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary

    Age: 47

    Bio: has served as Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of Network Solutions since December 1997. From 1986 until 1997, Mr. Emery held a variety of positions with Tambrands Inc., a consumer products company, most recently as Vice President, Senior Counsel and Assistant Secretary. Prior thereto, from 1977 until 1986, Mr. Emery was an Associate with the law firm of Brown & Wood. Mr. Emery received a B.A. from Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, and a J.D. from Boston University School of Law.

    David H. Holtzman

    Position: Senior Vice President, Engineering

    Age: 42

    Class A Shares: 13,704

    1998 Sal: $157,615, Bon: $70,000, plus other compensation including options

    Resides: 904 Monroe St, Herndon, VA 20170, FAIRFAX CO
    1/1/1999 Assessed Value: $270,660
    Most Recent Sale Date: 6/11/1998 @ $313,500
    Residential Phone: 703-481-9050

    Bio: Has served as Senior Vice President, Engineering of Network Solutions since February 1997. From September 1995 until January 1997, he served as Business Development Manager, Development Manager and Chief Scientist, Internet Information Technology (InfoMarket) group of IBM Corporation, a computer systems, software, networking systems and storage devices manufacturer. Prior thereto, from May 1992 to 1994, he served as a Senior Associate at Booz-Allen & Hamilton, a management consulting firm. Mr. Holtzman received a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh and a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland.

    Donald N. Telage

    Position: Senior Vice President, Internet Relations and Special Projects

    Age: 54

    Class A Shares: 39,488

    1998 Sal: $188,999, Bon: $85,000, plus other compensation including options

    Resides: 2110 Highcourt Ln UNIT 203, Herndon, VA 20170, FAIRFAX CO
    Co-owned with TELAGE SUSAN M
    1/1/1999 Assessed Value: $103,600
    Most Recent Sale Date: 3/28/1995 @ $116,400
    Residential Phone: 703-787-9438

    Bio: Has served as a director of Network Solutions since May 1995 and as Senior Vice President, Internet Relations and Special Programs of Network Solutions since February 1997. Dr. Telage also served as President and Chief Operating Officer of Network Solutions from May 1995 to February 1997. Since 1986, Dr. Telage has served in various positions with SAIC and has served as a Group Senior Vice President of SAIC since 1993. Prior thereto, Dr. Telage served as a Corporate Vice President of SAIC from 1992 to 1993. Dr. Telage received his B.A. in Psychology from the University of Connecticut and received an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Clark University.

    Douglas L. Wolford

    Position: Senior Vice President, Marketing and Sales

    Age: 37

    Bio: Has served as Senior Vice President, Marketing and Sales of Network Solutions since December 1997. From December 1994 to November 1997, Mr. Wolford was employed by General Electric Information Services, Inc., an electronic commerce company, during which tenure he progressed to the position of General Manager Marketing (Americas). Prior thereto, he was employed from March 1989 to December 1994 by the National Academy of Engineering, most recently as Director, Development and Public Affairs. Mr. Wolford received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from North Carolina State University, a Certificat de Langue Francaise from Sorbonne University and an M.B.A. in Marketing from the University of Maryland.

    Charles A. Gomes

    Position: Vice President, Customer Programs

    Age: 52

    Resides: 17307 Bighorn Ct, Round Hill, VA 20141, LOUDOUN CO
    Residential Phone: 540-338-9292

    Bio: Has served as Vice President, Customer Programs of Network Solutions since March 1998. Mr. Gomes has been part of Network Solutions' management team since 1984. From October 1995 to March 1998, Mr. Gomes served as Director of Customer Programs. Prior to assuming his current responsibilities, Mr. Gomes managed various programs and projects at Network Solutions involving delivery of technical services to various federal and state government agencies. Mr. Gomes received a B.A. in Mathematics from the University of California, Davis, and a Master's of Education from Boston University.

    Michael G. Voslow

    Position: Vice President, Finance and Treasurer

    Age: 39

    Resides: 1310 Alps Dr, Mc Lean, VA 22102, FAIRFAX CO
    Co-owned with VOSLOW REBECCA A R
    1/1/1999 Assessed Value: $398,765
    Most Recent Sale Date: 12/3/1991 @ $431,000
    Residential Phone: 703-442-7891

    Bio: Has served as Vice President, Finance and Treasurer since March 1998 and as Treasurer of Network Solutions since January 1997. From January 1995 to January 1997, Mr. Voslow was Vice President and Corporate Controller for MAXM Systems Corporation, a worldwide provider of computer software and professional services. Prior to joining MAXM, Mr. Voslow was a Senior Manager at Price Waterhouse where he served from August 1983 to January 1995. Mr. Voslow is a Certified Public Accountant and received a B.S. in Business Administration from Miami University (Ohio) and an M.B.A. in Finance from Duke University.

    Karla Leavelle

    Position: Director, Human Resources

    Resides: 4610 Gramlee Cir, Fairfax, VA 22032, FAIRFAX CO
    Co-owned with GRIENDLING ROBERT J
    1/1/1999 Assessed Value: $256,250
    Most Recent Sale Date: 6/30/1995 @ $245,000
    Residential Phone: 703-978-4468

  • My fault. (Score:1)

    by Hemos ( 2 )
    Fixed it.
  • We are under a tremendous load due to growth.

    If half of the people commenting on this story aren't talking through their hats, you're going to be "growing" like Scientology, soon. Sure, the hordes dropping y'all like a slimy potato may end up being just as annoyed with the competition as they are with you, but that won't help much when the layoffs come.

  • I guess we'll have to go out and force all the companies that will do registration to not give out this sort of info. But I'm curious, how do they get things like number of employees or annual sales?

  • NIN (Score:1)

    by iota ( 527 )
    isnt that a nine inch nails song?

    i am the dot in your dot com... (and i control you)
    i am the slash in your slash dot... (and i control you)
    i am the core in your home directory... (and i control you)

    no, thats not right...
    ;)
  • To speak for myself personally, I am not in the phone book. I also do not use services which require personal information and reserve the right to sell this information unless they in turn guarantee me in writing that they will not use my information.

    On the other hand, I do submit postal information with companies and organizations I do wish to send me commercial postal mail, catalogs, flyers, etc. I have even at one time or another offered my email address to a company which stated that they would occasionally send me advertising in exchange for a service. I just procmail their advertising into a folder other than my inbox. Yes I do look at it--not closely usually, but I do look.

    My time has a price. If you force me to spend my time reading spam, I will take the extra time do do whatever I can to help make your life hell. If you want to offer me a useful service in exchange for commercial email which I can sort someplace other than my primary inbox and look at it when I want, I'll actually look at it.

    As for postal junkmail, I can very easily process that at my convenience anyway.

  • Hmm, the .us domain seems to be administered by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). Hopefully they will continue to keep things sane even without Postel around to check up on them...
  • $5? - you crazy man.
  • Glad someone here is paying attention before
    over-reacting.

  • That doesn't even make sense. The whole point of the Internet is the lack of central control, which is why NSI is obsolete, and getting stupider every day.

    If NSI is the operating system, could we please format them, and reinstall sooner? I hate it when an operating system does stupid things behind my back without telling me. :)
  • ldap://ldap.domain.top

    No, more like:

    http://some.domain.with.new.top:ldap/index.html.

    The front part of a URL describes the protocol over the connection, not how to find it.
  • Yeah, right!
  • Sorry, but maybe I should have put :> somewhere there. But big part of capitalism driving is plain old greed!

    J.
  • If they do this with UK companies they are in breach of the Data Protection Act 1984(?). Admitedly, the majority of UK companies are registered with RIPE rather than Internic/NSI but those that have a .com domain in addition to .co.uk will also be registered with the Internic.

    Any Brits want to comment on this and perhaps point this out to NSI?

    Nick

  • It just doesn't end with them does it? I can't wait to go somewhere else for registration. I have a transfer pending from February - forget it. I have to tell the guy to leave the site where it is, we can't get it moved. They don't respond to emails or answer the phone. It wasn't always this bad. I think they've gone off the deep end.
  • Bruce Chovnik's got a SUCKY commute! Gaithersburg to Herndon. He must hate life. :)
    computers://use.urls. People use Networds.
  • I was briefly confused too...it turns out that the Slashdot link is in two adjacent parts; click on the first part (as you and I did), and it takes you to an uninteresting internic page. Click on the second part to get to the actual story.
  • It's bad enough when random companies do this, but Internic has had a monopoly on URL registration, so to make full use of the net, people have been forced to use Internic. (Sure, that's changing, but they've already got that huge database.)

    It's one thing for people to be able to contact the owner of a particular IP/URL, but it's quite another for them to do massive, indeed internet-universal, privacy violation.

    And selling to spammers...that adds insult to injury.

    I know, I'm preaching to the choir, but still, this really bugs me.

  • And your point would be...?

    It's not like they won't be selling .net info. They have those, too.
  • I feel sorry for you then. Me, I'm the t in http

    No, the other one. Yeah, that's me.

  • There seem to be two different issues involved here, privacy and information ownership. They are not the same issue, although they are related.

    With regard to privacy, it has never been the case that domain registration information was private. It makes some sense for this data to be a matter of public record; the purpose of collecting the data is to provide a means of contacting the people responsible for a domain. Since DNS is a public resource, and no one is forced to register a domain, there is some justification for the data being publicly available in order to facilitate the proper management of the public resource. I realize that there are also strong arguments to be made in favor of privacy. However, this is not my major concern. It is easy enough to register a domain with a mail drop and a voice mailbox as the contact information. Or some people provide entirely false information. I don't think that is a good idea, but it can be done. Personally I am not in favor of supporting anonymous domain registration, any more than I would be in favor of anonymous automobile registration.

    What I am concerned about is the concept that NSI claims to own the data. It might perhaps seem counterintuitive, but I am claiming that I don't mind NSI giving away my data, yet I object to their selling it. And it's not really even the selling per se that is the problem. It's that since they claim to own it, they aren't really selling it. They are licensing it, and claim that no one else has the right to distribute it.

    Effectively they have stolen my data, by licensing it to third parties under different terms than I've previously granted them permission. If they want to actually own my data, to the extent that they can license it as they please, then they had damn well better buy it from me first.

    In addition, they appear to be combining the data with other data they obtain from third parties. Yet I am given no opportunity to review this additional data and correct any errors. Others have pointed out that much of the information NSI is selling can be obtained from D&B or other sources. However, when you obtain that information from D&B, it doesn't come pre-packaged with domain name registration information, and that is the crucial difference. NSI may have the right to resell information they have legitimately purchased from another source such as D&B, but they do not have the right to comingle it with my domain registration information, since they don't own the latter.

    I feel doubly screwed by this, since I've paid them for this great privilege. What a great business to be in: one group of people pays them $70 each to collect the data, and another group buys the resulting database!

  • When I signed up for my domain in December of 1995, I don't recall that the domain agreement gave the Internic (or NSI) ownership of my data. The information I provided was for the sole purpose of allowing the Internic to effectively maintain the domain name system under contract to the NSF.

    Now they claim that they own the data, and that the database is proprietary such that they can do with it as they will. I think this is a load of crap, and am tempted to have a lawyer draft a cease and desist order demanding that NSI refrain from claiming that the data I've provided to them regarding my domain is proprietary to them, selling that data to a third party, or using the data in any other way not explicity authorized by their contract with the NSF.

  • I like .cx [nic.cx] myself. They give you a month free, and are about $17/year.
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
  • Creating life as we know it and personally supervising evolution. Who knows maybe that's why humanity's so fscked up right now? :)
  • "We need to be more than a domain name company," said Douglas Wolford, NSI executive vice president. "We believe we are the operating system for the Internet."
    I've heard a lot of pompous BS masquerading as mission statements in my time, but this one takes the cake. This is even less connected to reality than the usual PR snowjob companies release to the press.
    It's too bad we can't give people like this a reality injection and watch them squirm as they realize their own ignorance.
    I, for one, intend to wait until I can by my domain from someone OTHER than NSI. I've waited this long, after all ...

  • What the hell is going on with this? It seems like all the major news sites are in competition to see who has the most unreadable HTML. It's getting ridiculous, I just use 1280x1024 and I can barely read this page. I use windows at work in 1024x768 and I saw a page [novell.com] (it isn't as bad in Netscape linux as in Windows) the other day that had a dropdown box that used a typeface no larger than a small pin head. Why do people use those stupid tags? Can't they make this illegal or something? It must be all those Win CrapApps that people use to write html.

    Oh, I almost forgot. NSI sucks. What arrogance.

  • Not disagreeing, but it's:

    - .com : Commercial Institutions. (So personal .com's are breaking the rules...)

    - .net : Networking Equipment. (Not instutions... In other words, no services should actually be run off these, they're just there for traceroutes and the like.)

    - .org : Anything that doesn't fit into the first two. In other words, organisations that might make a profit, but couldn't be described as a commrcial institution. Individuals fit into here I think best...

  • um (Score:1)

    by twl ( 5820 )
    are you a bot? saying something five times doesn't make it so.

    interesting how netsol had two choices in the face of competition (offer better service, or abuse monopoly for the rest of its duration) and chose the one least likely to retain customers after the end of its monopoly. isn't that a good basis for a shareholder class action lawsuit, never mind the others that have been mentioned?

    i'll be glad when i have a choice.
  • Anoyone want to organize the announcement of a boycott of NSI? With the new registries about to open up and a pending boycott, that may be enough to depress their share price (which is the only thing that matters to them anyway). Might be enough to scare them off.
  • That information is available in databases from infoUSA and Dun and Bradstreet. It is regularly used in marketing and direct mail sales. You can buy subsets of the data for anywhere from $70 to several thousands of dollars...
  • 1) that information is available from several companies: infoUSA and Dun and Bradstreet are just two. You can purchase the same information for anywhere from $30 to several thousands of dollars.
    NSI did _not_ get this information from companies during the registration process. They got it from the same place that any of the other yellow page services get it.

    2) NSI has never sold the database to spammers. Until recently it was very easy to suck our database based on retrieving the zone file and diffing it.
  • Send me private email. I might be able to do something for you. We are under a tremendous load due to growth. Plus its really hard finding good help to do front line customer support these days.
  • The information in that database is available from several companies and is compiled from public sources. infoUSA and Dun and Bradstreet are just two. That information isn't part of the Internic database and isn't discovered during the registration process.

    You can purchase the same information for pennies per company. Its compiled from the yellow pages, SEC filings, and by even calling the companies directly.
  • I assume you area also going to attempt to opt out of the services at Yahoo, MSN, AOL, USWest and Ameritech? The reason I ask is that, if your info is in that database (and just because you have a .com doesn't mean you actually are in it) then its also appearing in those other services as well.

    I.e. NSI is simply repackaging data that already appears in services all over the net and they don't give you an opt out method either.

  • This isn't from the registration database... (Score:3)

    by MikeM ( 5881 ) on Friday April 16, 1999 @11:30PM (#1929313) Homepage
    The information in the database mentioned in the article is not from the registration database. Read the first paragraph again, NSI isn't licensing the database _to_ infoUSA, its licensing the data _from_ infoUSA. infoUSA is an aggregator of data about companies. They get it from public sources like the yellow pages, SEC filings and by calling the company directly.

    NSI is _not_ selling the data to infoUSA and its not getting the data from registrants. Its using already public information the same way that 411 and the other yellow pages services do.

    The service is no different from the services that infoUSA already sells their info to: Yahoo, MSN, AOL, etc.
  • Yah, 128 bit addressing. Sure, like we're really ever going to see that.

    Probably about the same time we see the US finally adopt the metric system.

    Both are pretty much the same line of BS from the US we've been hearing for years.

    IPv6 (aka IPng - IP The Next Generation):
    Conceptualized back when Star Trek-The Next Generation was still on. Now here, where Star Trek:Deep Space Nine is done in a couple weeks, it STILL ain't in place. (And we all home they cancel that pathetic ST:Voyager series. Send us all a nude picture of 7of9 and send the rest back to whereever they came from)

    Realize smoke up your ass when you see/hear/feel it...
  • NSI is "the .com company"

    BR?
    Sun is "the . in .com"
  • This is unsuprising. They'll probably stay in business for awhile based on all the kickbacks and slushfunds they get from spammers.

    Thank god domains will soon cost $5, and NSI will be broke due to competition. ;)



    --
  • Reading down a bit furthur, you might come across:

    "InfoUSA, whose best known subsidiaries are DatabaseAmerica and American Business Information, also will add NSI's ".com" directory to its Web site."

    Please explain to me how InfoUSA can add NSI's ".com" directory to their database if NSI is not selling it to them?

    Personal information like that is property, if NSI is generating reveneue from my personal information, I want a cut, so I have just politely informed them that the fee to include my information in any such database is a mere $500. I think I may be going too easy on them...
  • It won't do them any good unless they get all the root nameservers to recognize the MLM top-level-domain. If all the roots don't see it, then anything under MLM won't resolve.


    The following sentence is true.
    The previous sentence is false.

  • um? (Score:1)

    by kuro5hin ( 8501 )
    If I'm being really stupid here, please be gentle, but I don't see anything like that at that link, or on any pages connected to it. What's up?
    ----------------------
  • Thanks. I knew it was something like that. :-)

    "Error Type 3. User IQ (-4) out of range (0..200). Please reboot."
    ----------------------

  • I, for one, think it amazing that Alternic has yet to be mentioned in these postings here. I mean, Kashpureff worked his but off hacking Network Solutions, and went to jail over fighting this crap. Why hasn't the open source community really enveloped Alternic?
  • Way to go... Here's mine:

    I paid for a service. I had no choice in vendors, because NSI was given a governmentally approved monopoly. I can live with this; it was a necessary evil.

    Now, however, according to the article at http://www.news.com/News/ Item/0,4,0-35228,00.html?st.ne.fd.mdh [news.com] you plan on selling this data that I provided to you with the expectation of privacy. I hereby serve notice that if you sell my information to anyone at anytime, I will file suit immediately.

  • or industrial espionage.

    ~enucite~
  • I'm only half-way down the comments (nested-order by score) and I've seen you say this same thing about 3 or 4 times!
    For the love of God! Just post _ONE_ toplevel comment, and quit filling up my screen with this crap.
    --Question--
    Does anyone know if there is an option to filter USER comments from the comments page?
    If there isn't anything: ROB can you please put a section in the preferences page where we can enter the user names of people whose comments we want to filter out?

    ~enucite~

  • ..eventually. :)

    As for replacing BIND, what happens if you give named a root-servers file with different root servers in it?

    For the past six months or so, I've been involved in a discussion between representatives of a number of major international corporations, mostly in the financial services sector, who are considering building a kind of a next-generation Internet, called the Grid, co-operatively owned and operated (similar to the UK's NIC [www.nic.uk]), based upon IPv6, with all of the advantages that entails.

    From what I've heard in the meetings I've attended, they plan to build an intial backbone around the world, centred and controlled from London, linking to Dublin, Paris, Frankfurt, Berlin, Moscow, Hong Kong, Tokyo and a couple of cities in the United States. It would initially only be used by the companies involved in initially setting it up, but, later, anyone would be allowed to join and become equal shareholders in the non-profit company which will own and operate the backbone, as long as they pay their share of the cost of maintaining the backbone.

    The technical details aren't really an issue at the moment. One of the committee invited me along after hearing me speak at a conference and I've been advising them as to what's possible and what's not. What you've outlined above is the sort of thought process I had to go through to figure out how the Grid's DNS system could interface with the exiting Internet's.

    It's all quite interesting. Whether it'll actually pan out is another matter, but their reasons for wanting to do this (dissatisfaction with the current ownership and administration of the Internet and with it's security) aren't exactly unreasonable.

    Funnily enough, the main things they end up discussing in their meetings are related to the administration of Grid - i.e. how the administrating company would be set up and owned, whether all the stakeholders should have an equal vote or not, how to ensure that no one company or organisation can gain too much power, etc. They're not all that worried about the technical side, because it's all pretty much possible - or will be when IPv6-capable networking equipment and operating systems become available.

    It's a lot of fun sitting there and watching them all get into seriously deep legal discussions and so on...


    The Dodger
    Hacker & International Network Architect ;)



  • ..eventually. :)


    As for replacing BIND, what happens if you give named a root-servers file with different root servers in it?


    For the past six months or so, I've been involved in a discussion between representatives of a number of major international corporations, mostly in the financial services sector, who are considering building a kind of a next-generation Internet, called the Grid, co-operatively owned and operated (similar to the UK's NIC [www.nic.uk]), based upon IPv6, with all of the advantages that entails.


    From what I've heard in the meetings I've attended, they plan to build an intial backbone around the world, centred and controlled from London, linking to Dublin, Paris, Frankfurt, Berlin, Moscow, Hong Kong, Tokyo and a couple of cities in the United States. It would initially only be used by the companies involved in initially setting it up, but, later, anyone would be allowed to join and become equal shareholders in the non-profit company which will own and operate the backbone, as long as they pay their share of the cost of maintaining the backbone.


    The technical details aren't really an issue at the moment. One of the committee invited me along after hearing me speak at a conference and I've been advising them as to what's possible and what's not. What you've outlined above is the sort of thought process I had to go through to figure out how the Grid's DNS system could interface with the exiting Internet's.


    It's all quite interesting. Whether it'll actually pan out is another matter, but their reasons for wanting to do this (dissatisfaction with the current ownership and administration of the Internet and with it's security) aren't exactly unreasonable.


    Funnily enough, the main things they end up discussing in their meetings are related to the administration of Grid - i.e. how the administrating company would be set up and owned, whether all the stakeholders should have an equal vote or not, how to ensure that no one company or organisation can gain too much power, etc. They're not all that worried about the technical side, because it's all pretty much possible - or will be when IPv6-capable networking equipment and operating systems become available.


    It's a lot of fun sitting there and watching them all get into seriously deep legal discussions and so on...




    The Dodger

    Hacker & International Network Architect ;)

  • They contract with companies that already exist to provide this information.

    As for how they get it, I think they survey the companies involved. I think how it works is that this information is then used as a package meant to help judge the quality of company credit. Since most businesses need/want credit, it's not hard for them to get the information.

    How accurate it is, of course, is anybody's guess. Getting data for public companies is pretty easy, but I think all they can do for private firms is ask.

    D

    First post on my new (well, used, well, ancient, well, 200mhz R4400) Indigo2. Nice to be back to SGI again. Irix(tm) is a weakness of mine..
    ----
  • Lets do it. Who out there has the contacts to get something like this moving?

    --
  • I don't like either of those slogans. "What can we dot-com for you?"

    Since when can a top-level-domain be "verbified"?
  • That's dandy...and as I said in the letter I am requesting to be removed, not that they stop practices that are common. If Network Solutions can process my credit-card info and introduce that into the databases in 3 days they can implement a web-based Opt Out service. Or maybe they can't and in that case it's good they're getting some competition.

    AC
  • In that case Network Solutions is simply abusing the situation and I am mistaken. But even if there is no additional information that I have provided via InterNIC registrations I still ask for it to be removed. Your defense of the situation by claiming (paraphrased) "other people do it" doesn't change the fact that I, as a user of the Internet, do not want to see this kind of reselling of personal information.

    I will deal with Yahoo, Dun & Bradsteet, and the others if I like. When I asked for AT&T to stop calling me they didn't reply by telling me that MCI calls too. So you know why?...because the Gov't stepped in when everyone got sick and tired of being interuptted at dinner time by "great offers for a new service".

    Network Solutions should eye this whole situation very carefully because they will probably be the one that an example is made of to appease the unhappy netizens.

    AC

  • Okay, enough reading... (Score:3)

    by Androgynous Coward ( 13443 ) on Friday April 16, 1999 @10:59PM (#1929332)
    Here's my letter via their feedback form [netsol.com] and it is being sent to my Representatives in New York State which I retrieved from Yahoo's Gov't Directory [yahoo.com] . Stop this BS now...it's unacceptable that they are delaying the ability to "Opt Out".

    I'm writing in regards to an article I've just read on news.com concerning your intention of selling business info from the InterNic database (http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,0-35228,00.html ?st.ne.fd.mdh).

    I do not recall ever seeing any mention of this ability of yours to do this with the information I have supplied to you over the past few years. As it stands now, I am offically requesting for you to "Opt Out" my information from this planned availability as soon as possible.

    In instances when I have found this practice occuring with other companies I've dealt with they've assured me that they would remove me from the databases of solicitaion lists they were using. I supplied my infomation to you with payment to obtain a service that I had no option but to use; meaning, I wasn't *giving* you my info for a free t-shirt or for the ability to win a prize. If I choose to do that I am aware of what the information is used for.

    I am cc'ing a copy of this letter to my Representatives in Congress (you don't have to look it up...it's NY State) and hope that you reconsider not offering the ability to get removed from this proposed "service".

    Just another A.C.

  • I am getting massively spammed by people on my cell phone # which is in my registrant info at Internic. Its pretty friggin annoying.
  • Something I've mentioned before (I think) is an idea I've had regarding copyrighting your personal information.

    Why not?

    It's obvious that your personal information (age, sex, race, shopping preferences) is worth a lot of money. Consider how many companies pay big bucks to other companies to get that information. Consider how desperate many companies are to get that information; so desperate, in fact, that they are willing to bribe you with t-shirts and tech support.

    The current information service industry makes money by selling information collated from data they gather from various sources.

    Why not gather every scrap of information about yourself into a searchable database (your brain, maybe?), and then charge companies for the use of that data?

    Copyright yourself, or at least the data fingerprint you leave upon the world. If the software industry can make much ado about little 1s and 0s being copyrightable, surely your personality can be copyrightable. And wouldn't it make you feel a lot better to know that every time your name passed through a database in some obscure system, you made a few cents, and if the bad ole NSI sells that information about you without your consent, well... they could meet with Mr. Copyright Infringement suit. Or pay you royalties...

    Hmm.. Banner ads for the soul?
  • And mine:

    To: help@networksolutions.com [mailto]

    Please read the first paragraph of this news article about NSI: http://www.news.com/ News/Item/0,4,0-35228,00.html?st.ne.fd.mdh [news.com]

    I will be extremly upset if you begin selling my data (and my clients' data). When I divulge sensitive contact information, I expect it to be kept confidential. The whois interface has always been ONE WAY - query and response. That's very different from selling a list split out by demographic. The contact info I keep in your database is to be used in case of a NETWORK OUTAGE. The last thing I need is for yahoos (excuse the pun) start calling me at all hours on the "emergency line".

    Not to mention the fact that your system bites. Yahoo could do a better job of organizing a database - and keeping it secure. When is the soonest I can take my business elsewhere?

    I would like all DNS entries (host, domain, contact, everything!) connected to the host sam.julianhaight.com REMOVED from any lists you are selling.

    -=Julian=-

  • I am the 0 and the 1.

    (All this reminds me of NIN's "Mr. Self Destruct", heh)
  • Hello. I just got this article off of c|net: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,0-35228,00.html? st.ne.fd.mdh

    I have but one thing to say to you regarding this: it is utter and complete bullshit.

    I really like the lack of an Opt Out policy that will be around a while. That is really sweet. What a wonderful way for you all to get a buttload of money for your database up front by making sure EVERYONE gets loads and loads of junk mail!

    Ohhhh I can't wait for the day the other registration systems come online. You can bet your sweet ass that after this latest load of horse hockey that I will be taking my business elsewhere.

    I will NEVER do business with a bunch of low life privacy invaders like you. You lost a customer for good.
  • If information is valuable, this amounts to theft. Since they have/had a monopoly, this is just evil. A class-action suit might be just what the doctor ordered.
  • In thier inept attempts to remain relevant to the internet they have managed to begin alienating themselves from their lifeblood. This is a rather greedy move (legal? yes. right? no.) that follows up the ballsy move of redirecting registrant traffic to their own site. By scrambling to remain relevant, they may have managed to do just the opposite.
  • That's a really good question..

    Alternic was/is a good idea. In fact, I use (have been using) the db.root method for bind for a very long time now. But Alternic suffered from a lack of acceptance from the greater community, unfortunately. And they are a bit profit minded.

    There is NO law that says I have to use the 'accepted' root servers for my name service. I can set my root servers to anything I damn well please. So then, this whole thing with NSI and et al is ridiculous, and strictly a matter of 'who does the government say runs the public database?'.

    If 28 new registries pop up for new top level domains, it would take me 10 seconds to support each one of them. Why does that not happen? Well, BigCompany(tm) and its subsidiaries want to see central control instituted everywhere possible on everything in our lives, so that they can exploit those control points to leverage their profits. BigGovernment(tm) wants this too, so that they can 'Make Life Safer' for us by having it within their means to force direction and stifle radical change.

    So, I would LOVE to see alternate registries and root servers, not under the purvue of any government agency or commitee, instituted. But That would take money. Gobs of it. And vision. And nobody whom HAS that money wants to spend it on this sort of thing. And noone whom has that vision seems to have that money. Also, noone has come up with a better way of maintaining all of this information, so it seems that the bind methodology will be with us for awhile. And so thus built into the DNS protocol is a central point of control.

    Of course, it would be easy to use the existing bind implementation to ease that central control out from under us. There just needs to be a different strategy used for root server querying. Personally, I think that all of the top level domains should get their own root servers, if not multiple servers for each. The main root servers should only function as pointers to other TLD servers, thus eliminating the massive resource requirement. I believe .com is up to 400+megs, but that's no big deal these days, if that's all you have on your box. Now, all you have to do is a zone transfer of '.' once a week or two, and you have all of the root servers. Then you do an NS query for each TLD listed in the root server file once a day or two. Even if there are a thousand of them, it would be a small record. You would then be going directly to the TLD servers for that information. And in the systems that don't switch over to the new system, they would get one more referral than usual.

    Under this scheme, any medium sized ISP could run a root server and have no problem keeping up with the load. It would NEVER get queried for name service unless you were running under the old system.

    The issue then becomes, how the heck do the folks whom run TLD servers get compensated? I mean, there is no way I would run a TLD server unless I had funds coming in from somewhere. This is where the folks at BigCompany have exerted their control, and why we are left with the system we have now.

    The current system has it that only registries would get money to support servers like this. Maybe that's the best way.. I don't know for certain. Something to think about.

    Wow.. I'm getting long-winded..well, to sum up, I think the KEY here is to sluff off the TLD load from root servers to TLD servers. That way, root servers become less resource intensive, and the load gets distributed to all of the TLD servers, of which there could be many. Change the way we use bind a tiny bit, and we are off.

    Yes, I KNOW that this would create additional traffic on an already loaded up internet.. but which do we want more.. a new method that decentralizes control a bit, or a few Kbps more of bandwidth at peak?

    ---

  • If you check their web page, they now (do not know for how long they've been doing this) register your domain simultaneously under .com, .org and .net! What happened to the functional distinction between for-profits, non-profits and network providers??
  • WTF does this have to do with capitalism? Capitalism means NOT ALIENATING YOUR CUSTOMERS
    so that they'll continue to do business with you
    and you will continue to profit.

    This is just plain old fucking GREED (I believe
    that's older than capitalism).

    -thomas
  • Calvin: I like to verb words. Remember when "access" was just a thing you had? Now it's something you do. It got verbed.

  • Perhaps if those of us that e-mailed NSI don't get personal responses from NSI stating they are going to remove us from their lists, we should call the 'people that matter' at home during dinner hour and ask them for a response then. :) Being that we now have all their home phone numbers and all thanks to this post.

    If they lack respect for our privacy, why should we respect theirs? Heck, we *payed* them when we gave them our information, we had no choice, and nobody told us we were giving our private information away. If anyone deserves to lose their privacy between us and them, it's them.

    Maybe we should group up and set a time to call if we don't get responses. :) Then keep calling till we get through.

    Just a thought, probably a crazy one though.
    --SONET
  • Well...go to internic and change all the contact info to @dev.nul. If you foul their database is it useful or valuable anymore?
  • Oh sure I'd love to do that.. Now that you mention it I've sent several letter's in the proper contact changing form for over the past 4 months to get info changed. Mainly to switch from mail from verification to pgp. I've sent my public key and fingerprint info. Started this back in January and STILL havn't gotten any reply except for the automated, we've got your letter, thing. So good luck on switching your contact info to null, I'm sure thats top priority for them.. All they care about is thier money... they got yours.. so now your of no use.
  • Well, proving once again there is no limit to the marketing exec's stupidity/banality, only his annual budget.
  • Well since they are selling my info, I thought I might post theirs... But when I went to InfoUSA [infousa.com] to find an address and number for their CEO, Vinod Gupta, I found he wasn't listed. InfoUSA is the company that will be reselling our information, however, it seems that some people care about their own privacy at the expense of others. I urge anyone who knows it to post his address, phone number, and the number of employees that he has. As a side note, the name of the NSI executive (Douglas Wolford) from the news.com story was also unlisted (on Switchboard [switchboard.com]).
  • You copyright things that you create.

    If you did it with things like fingerprints,
    sex, and race your parents could sue the fuck
    out of you. :P
  • what ever happened to good ol' fashioned visions of grandeur ;-)
  • I'll second that! I, for one, am never going to register another domain name again. What's so damn hard about remembering a number? I know a bunch of phone numbers.

    I can just see the day when AT&T starts offering DNS for our phone lines... those numbers are too hard to remember ya know. Then we'll probably see a mass rush to register by domain name hoarders. Any thing to make a buck....

  • ...not to mention the potential class action suit filed on behalf of your parents' parents, and their parents, and their parents, and...

    Yikes. :^)

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