RE: [ga] UDRP dead? Is the dot-biz registry typosquatting on AT&T 's trademarks?

[Elisabeth Porteneuve <Elisabeth.Porteneuve@cetp.ipsl.fr>]

It is often quite  useful to dig reasons of such apparent difference 
between gTLDs and ccTLDs: why wildcards allowed here and not there?
Besides .museum, which is totaly outside and another story.

I am being reminded that IAB have never permitted wildcards in gTLD 
zone files and that they have generally been discouraged in ccTLD 
zones except in the specific context of connecting new countries, 
where initially, in old pioneer times, it was necessary to route
all email into a single server or gateway to the country.

In other words, today the wildcards should not be used in ccTLD neither,
as it creates bad policy problems.

Now, what we are facing with Registries (and why not Registrars 
in next step?) redirecting ALL unregistered domains to their special
sites? 

When application is a web browser, the redirection goes to
money-making webpages. When application is an email, and when
a typo is made in destination address, who gets the correspondence?

Aren't such practices equivalent to interception of communication
traffic which is a crime in many countries?

As a possible escalation, one may imagine registries diverting
a query for a registered name to a different site/location
depending on address of origin ... or any other criteria ...

Is this the beginning of the end of Internet?

Elisabeth Porteneuve
--

> From owner-ga@dnso.org Tue May 20 21:12 MET 2003
> Message-ID: <5BEA6CDB196A4241B8BE129D309AA4AF10E7DC@vsvapostal8.vasrv.verisign.com>
> From: "Hollenbeck, Scott" <shollenbeck@verisign.com>
> To: "'Stephane Bortzmeyer'" <bortzmeyer@nic.fr>
> Cc: ga@dnso.org
> Subject: RE: [ga] UDRP dead? Is the dot-biz registry typosquatting on AT&T
> 	's trademarks?
> Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 15:09:09 -0400
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> 
> > > As reported on ICANNWatch, the dot-biz registry is redirecting ALL
> > > unregistered domains to money-making webpages 
> > (pay-per-click, powered
> > > by Looksmart).
> > 
> > It is outrageous but do note that Verisign GRS started the trend with
> > the answer to non-existing Unicode domain names in '.com' and
> > '.net'. ICANN did nothing
> > <URL:http://www.iab.org/Documents/icann-vgrs-response.html> so other
> > registries step in.
> 
> Just to set the record straight: VeriSign did not start the trend.  There
> are at least 11 TLDs (.cc, .cx, .io, .mp, .museum, .nu, .ph, .td, .tk, .tv,
> and .ws) that have been using DNS wildcards for quite some time to offer
> either domain registration services or to provide web navigation assistance.
> .museum's service is even documented in their agreement with ICANN:
> 
> http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/museum/sponsorship-agmt-att13-16oct01.h
> tm
> 
> Scott Hollenbeck
> VeriSign Naming and Directory Services
> --
> This message was passed to you via the ga@dnso.org list.
> Send mail to majordomo@dnso.org to unsubscribe
> ("unsubscribe ga" in the body of the message).
> Archives at http://www.dnso.org/archives.html
> 
> 
--
This message was passed to you via the ga@dnso.org list.
Send mail to majordomo@dnso.org to unsubscribe
("unsubscribe ga" in the body of the message).
Archives at http://www.dnso.org/archives.html