Thanks for the link (to a web site registered to Microsoft's
law firm) Milton. Court documents have yet to been posted on Pacer.
The fact that Microsoft was granted an ex parte TRO in this case
against Vitalwerks is absolutely disgraceful. It could be argued that
Microsoft might be entitled to a restraining order, even ex parte,
against the unnamed defendants, but Vitalwerks itself could easily
have been served and given at least some chance to respond, under a gag
order if necessary, to the emergency orders requested.
Microsoft's complaint is of the "throw the kitchen
sink and hope something sticks" variety. That's not to say there
are not some legitimate charges here, there are, but whether Microsoft has
standing to bring them and whether the defendants are correctly identified
and joined is questionable.
The innocent parties claiming to be injured today might be
interested in this representation by Microsoft: "Vitalwerks...derives
no known income from this free service. Thus, there is no hardship on
Defendants or any 3rd party" in granting the TRO.
Tell that to the folks who couldn't connect today.
There is also a gem for our WHOIS privacy advocates. In it's
negligence claim against Vitalwerks Microsoft claims that Vitalwerks, as
best practice, should be required to collect and verify the name,
address, telephone number and IP address of all it's customers and make
it publicly available in a searchable database (page 20 of Microsoft's
brief supporting it's Emergency TRO request). Delightful. Can't wait
to see Microsoft bring the same charge against Facebook.
In it's trademark claims, and much of Microsoft's standing
is derived from it's position as a TM rights holder, Microsoft
assumes TM rights in subdomain names are the same as legal rights granted
marks holders in domain names under the ACSA. Big assumption not currently
universally supported in law.
We do need to follow this case. If Microsoft achieves victory in
the manner requested on the basis argued we're looking at this case
expanding TM rights and further eroding privacy, at least in the United
States. Not to mention the diminution of due process, the horrid mixture of
public and private law and other such folly...
-----Original
Message-----
From: Milton L Mueller <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2014 16:09:55 +0000
Subject: Re: no-ip
Microsoft used some
very powerful legal tools, asking for temporary restraining orders, and
convinced a judge that the need for immediate action justified those
actions.
Http://noticeoflawsuit.com
They’ve since been forced to pull back on their response, but I
agree with Timothe that this is an issue that requires close attention and
has important implications for the ICANN community.
From:
NCSG-Discuss [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Seun Ojedeji
Sent: Tuesday, July 8, 2014 11:32 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [NCSG-Discuss] no-ip
Thanks for bringing this
up here; when i first read the news of Microsoft hijacking no-ip domain. The
first technical question that came to mind was; Is Microsoft now some form
of an hacker because i was just wondering how they took-over without any
form of authorisation from the domain owner. However i guess the section
below from your url clears it for me
Under the terms of the court decision, the DNS
lookups for the domains were passed to Microsoft's name servers, with
the plan being that Redmond would filter out No-IP subdomains linked to
malicious activity and let legitimate subdomains resolve as expected.
Having cleared the
technical sides of the story, the question now is whether no-ip should bound
to respond to such call from Microsoft especially since its not an act from
no-ip itself but the users. One could liken this to running botnets on
systems that exist on a large ISP network to attack a particular
organisation. Does the victim sue the ISP or the users who don't even
know they are botnet nodes.
I haven't been
following things here for a while, so sorry if this has
already been noticed.
If not, here's a case of judicial interference with the DNS, coupled
with incompetent 'solutions'.
This is highly relevant to the ncsg constituency as many non-commercial
users live with dynamic IP addresses, using services such as no-ip to
have stable names in the DNS.
Of course, our terms of membership can be read to exclude these users -
but note that there's nothing to prevent a similar action being taken
against direct holders of domain names...
Here's the story:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/01/sorry_chaps_microsoft_unborks_legitimate_noip_users_domains/
The comments provide more detail - which for technical readers is tragic.
--
Timothe Litt
ACM Distinguished Engineer
--------------------------
This communication may not represent the ACM or my
employer's views,
if any, on the matters discussed.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The
key to understanding is humility - my view !