*.biz and *.us now resolve

Registry over stepping boundaries

[Lisa]

The neustar registry is overstepping its boundaries. They have added a wildcard entry to the root of .us and .biz, this means that anything not registered now resolves to a pay per search engine.

[wwwpepsi.biz...]

[type-oh-wwwpepsi.biz...]

[toolman]

Yeeeck! And LookSmart no less.

This illuminates what may become a problem as time goes by in the addressing system of a world wide network. Who has the ultimate authority and enforcement to govern addressing problems on a multi national basis?

[Lisa]

Sovereign nations and sponsored TLDs doing wildcard tricks is one thing. But it is a dangerous precedent to allow a unsponsored gTLD to do this.

I can imagine the typo rate in .COM is huge and the effect on consumers would be mass confusion if Verisign were to follow Neustar's actions. Small TLD like .biz can really get away with this right now, which is bad because this creates an extremely dangerous precedent for Verisign to say, "look we are only following the example of the other unsponsored registries". We are setting up a slipper slope that is easy to follow.

Unsponsored gTLDs should not just launch new features that confuse consumers and undermine how DNS has behaved for years. I am not even talking about the legal ramification here, just consumers getting confused. Not to mention that these ccTLD operators that you speak of resolve to a page that says, "This domain available for sale". Neustar is not even doing that, they are landing people on a very deceptive page that states, "The page you are looking for may have been removed, changed name, or be temporarily unavailable."

What Neustar is doing is cashing in on the confused traffic, I find it immoral for a registry to land people on a pay per search engine where the registry receives payment for every search the confused user does. They are not even telling people the domain is available. I see a class action lawsuit coming against this soon. Mark my words. I would advise all unsponsored gTLDs not to behave or follow Neustar's example. I can only hope Neustar comes to their senses and stops this deceptive practice on their own.

[netguy]

Good point Lisa.

At the very least, they could do a "Did You Mean...?" response to incorrect entries before slamming people to LookSmart.

As far as NetSol is concerned, my experience has been that if there is a buck in it for them, they'll try it.

[nebuhost]

holy crap. thats disgusting. :(

[dotbiz]

Is it just me, or...?

It does not resolve to anything when I type in a random .biz name. Anyone really checked?

[msr986]

This is not happening for me.

When I type in an invalid .biz URL I get the standard 'Cannot find server or DNS' error.

Strange.

[Lisa]

Looks like they stopped the wildcard for *.biz and *.us. I hope it stays dead. It would be very scary if *.com was allowed to follow in the foot steps of neustart.

> dig asfdsdfadsf.us

; <<>> DiG 8.3 <<>> asfdsdfadsf.us
;; res options: init recurs defnam dnsrch
;; res_nsend to server default -- 65.39.221.18: Operation timed out