After Microsoft Returns All Of No-IP's Seized Domains And Settles Lawsuit, No-IP Is Still Angry
from the reasonably-so dept
We recently wrote about Microsoft going to court and convincing a judge to (with no adversarial hearing) allow it to seize a bunch of domain names from No-IP, redirecting all traffic to them through Microsoft's own servers. Those servers quickly encountered problems, meaning that many people who relied on No-IP's dynamic DNS system, found that they couldn't access their sites. Microsoft later blamed this on a "technical error" but it still appeared that the seizure effort was a gross abuse of the legal process. Remember, in the lawsuit that allowed Microsoft to seize the domains, it had claimed that No-IP parent Vitalwerks had been breaking the law.Either way, it appears that Microsoft has now returned all the domains to No-IP and settled the lawsuit. According to a joint statement by the companies:
Microsoft has reviewed the evidence provided by Vitalwerks and enters into the settlement confident that Vitalwerks was not knowingly involved with the subdomains used to support malware. Those spreading the malware abused Vitalwerks’ services.No-IP for its part has also put out a more detailed explanation for how all of this happened. It's worth reading. It also takes apart a number of Microsoft's claims, including the company's claim that, prior to returning the domains, it had "fixed" the problems people were having accessing their sites. No-IP reiterates that if Microsoft had just contacted the company first, it would have taken down the abusive customers. Clearly, even though the situation was settled, No-IP is reasonably upset that it happened in the first place:
Microsoft identified malware that had escaped Vitalwerks’ detection. Upon notification and review of the evidence, Vitalwerks took immediate corrective action allowing Microsoft to identify victims of this malware. The parties have agreed to permanently disable Vitalwerks subdomains used to control the malware.
In the process of redirecting traffic to its servers for malware detection, Microsoft acknowledges that a number of Vitalwerks customers were impacted by service outages as a result of a technical error. Microsoft regrets any inconvenience these customers may have experienced.
While we are extremely pleased with the settlement terms, we are outraged by Microsoft’s tactics and that we were not able to completely and immediately restore services to the majority of our valuable customers that had been affected.Later it notes:
At No-IP, we are firm believers that the Internet should be free and open. We will continue to fight for the rights of our users and our business. Moving forward, we have provisioned a solution that will reduce the risk of domain seizures.
We hope that Microsoft learned a lesson from this debacle and that in the future they will not seize other companies domains and will use appropriate channels to report abuse.Wouldn't that be nice.
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Filed Under: domain seizures, dynamic dns, ex parte
Companies: microsoft, no-ip, vitalwerks
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We also hope that Jason Lee Van Dyke will apologize to everyone, quit his job as an attorney, and spend the remainder of his days volunteering for community projects.
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do you hate community projects so much that you want to purposefully sabotage them?
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* Helps chances that some driver might do the legal profession a favor, and run him over.
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And also, for a more probable hope, that Superman is cured from his kryptonite weakness.
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That's actually happened a few times.
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Of course Microsoft isn't going to go so far as to express their regret with monetary compensation for the people damaged and/or inconvenienced. They're just going to go "Sorry we fed the judge a line of bullshit that he bought instead of contacting the company that could have fixed the problem without incident. We didn't mean to screw ya'll over, but hey, we're Microsoft, we do what we want, so tough luck."
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Judge
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The majority of computer users does, equally incomprehensibly.
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"That's actually happened a few times".
In that case can we hope for politicians to turn honest and actually represent the people that elected them?
Maybe we could toss in a wish of imprisonment for the ODNI head and his minions.
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The Ex Parte TRO in the earlier Techdirt article, was signed by United States District Judge Gloria M. Navarro.
I have no idea whether Microsoft has bothered to tell her that she cut service to about four million sites which were owned by about two million people.
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I want in on this process
Where do I go to get the Microsoft.com domain turned over to me so I can fix this problem?
I think I'll put a penguin on it.
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I really hope all of the customer's of no-ip.com services that were effected start a class action suit against Microsoft. It wasn't as bad as the DoJ calling everyone on mooo.com services a pedophile, but still just as bad an idea to do.
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Ah, yes. Inverted responsibility. They will also stop being Black whenever they plan on driving anywhere, and stop being women whenever they dress for hot weather, just to avoid future problems.
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Which lawsuit
Is it safe to assume the No-IP will be suing Microsoft over this issue?
I mean, really, how can any company (no matter now large) just seize the property of another company if they suspect criminal behavior?
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I think that both parties learned something here. Microsoft has found out that they are not above the law, no matter how noble their cause. No-IP has learned that they need to do a better job checking their clients lest the find themselves in some serious trouble again in the future.
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That is about as sane as saying the phone company should be careful about who they give phone numbers to, to prevent criminals using the phone system.
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Why hasn't the judge been disbarred?
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