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No-IP's Formal Statement on Microsoft Takedown

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Re: No-IP's Formal Statement on Microsoft Takedown

#21

Post by cortesoft »

DangerousPie wrote: post #13
ddod wrote: post #9

The comments here are surprisingly pro-Microsoft. I'd personally rather deal with spam and botnets over a corporation legally being able to take over the DNS of other companies due to the actions of users of a service. Despite pretty clear slippery-slope arguments, I recognize this isn't a universal opinion. There are many people who would like to curb cyber-bullying at the expense of freedom of speech or curb terror…

It wasn't actually due to the actions of their user though, was it? It was because of the actions of NoIP themselves, who did not act to prevent abuse by their users. From what Cisco and Microsoft are reporting NoIP is (was?) a hotspot of botnet activity. If NoIP was not doing anything against that Microsoft's lawsuit doesn't sound that unreasonable. How this was actually implemented in the end (MS just taking over t…

Wouldn't a similar line of reasoning be "It seems that computers running Microsoft Windows are a hotspot of botnet activity. Year after year, a vast majority of computers used in botnets are running Windows; they are clearly not doing enough to prevent abuse by their users. Lets give control of the Windows code base to Linus"

Re: No-IP's Formal Statement on Microsoft Takedown

#22

Post by wfjackson »

Interesting that the claim they didn't get any notice, this is what Microsoft has to say in their complaint.

>...United States, including those located in the state of Nevada and the city of Las Vegas. Defendant has a contractual obligation to take reasonable and prompt steps to investigate and respond to reports of Internet or computer abuse, and the company has also made representations to the public that it has an “abuse team” to police and take action against such malicious activity. Yet Defèndant has failed to take sufficient action to stop, prevent, or effectively control this malicious conduct in breach of its contractual obligations and best practices of the industry, causing further harm to Nevada and Las Vegas residents.

Re: No-IP's Formal Statement on Microsoft Takedown

#23

Post by ddod »

jpgvm wrote: post #12
ddod wrote: post #9

The comments here are surprisingly pro-Microsoft. I'd personally rather deal with spam and botnets over a corporation legally being able to take over the DNS of other companies due to the actions of users of a service. Despite pretty clear slippery-slope arguments, I recognize this isn't a universal opinion. There are many people who would like to curb cyber-bullying at the expense of freedom of speech or curb terror…

I don't agree with the precedent set here but it does seem No-IP was doing a pretty bad job of responding to mass abuse. While I do take issue to the actions of Microsoft and the courts I also think No-IP hasn't done themselves any favours and are at least partially to blame for this coming to pass. It stands to reason that it's close to impossible to create a free service that is impervious to abuse however it's sti…

That responsibility is not absolute, and could be interpreted differently in the frameworks of ethicality, legality, economics, and liberty.

Ethically, I think you're correct that it's their responsibility to do what they can.

Legally, the court in this situation thought it was somehow Microsoft's responsibility to fix it.

Economically, I'd say being held liable to what users do on your platform will hurt innovation and competition.

In terms of liberty, botnets and spam don't seem like they compare to an attack on someone's business, their users, and their freedom to operate independently.

I guess you can choose which perspective makes the most sense to you, personally.

Re: No-IP's Formal Statement on Microsoft Takedown

#24

Post by higherpurpose »

ggchappell wrote: post #15

If this action is troubling, then we need to stop putting the blame in the wrong place. Microsoft does not have the power to seize domains. A federal court order made that happen. This order is (apparently) the responsibility of the U.S. District Court of Nevada. If you want to blame someone, then blame the court. Obnoxious people ask courts to do obnoxious things every day. Good courts do not comply.

So why not blame the "obnoxious people" in this case, too? It's like the patent system abusers (which perhaps not by coincidence, Microsoft is one, too) excuse: "don't hate the player, hate the game". Yeah, right. Nobody held a gun to their head to do this. It was a premeditated action by Microsoft.

Re: No-IP's Formal Statement on Microsoft Takedown

#25

Post by konstruktor »

ggchappell wrote: post #15

If this action is troubling, then we need to stop putting the blame in the wrong place. Microsoft does not have the power to seize domains. A federal court order made that happen. This order is (apparently) the responsibility of the U.S. District Court of Nevada. If you want to blame someone, then blame the court. Obnoxious people ask courts to do obnoxious things every day. Good courts do not comply.

Independent of the ethics of this particular case, I don't think your argument makes sense: The filing was a necessary, while not sufficient, condition for this restraining order, so you can't deny responsibility by denying agency.

Re: No-IP's Formal Statement on Microsoft Takedown

#26

Post by threeseed »

ddod wrote: post #23
jpgvm wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree with the precedent set here but it does seem No-IP was doing a pretty bad job of responding to mass abuse. While I do take issue to the actions of Microsoft and the courts I also think No-IP hasn't done themselves any favours and are at least partially to blame for this coming to pass. It stands to reason that it's close to impossible to create a free service that is impervious to abuse however it's sti…

That responsibility is not absolute, and could be interpreted differently in the frameworks of ethicality, legality, economics, and liberty. Ethically, I think you're correct that it's their responsibility to do what they can. Legally, the court in this situation thought it was somehow Microsoft's responsibility to fix it. Economically, I'd say being held liable to what users do on your platform will hurt innovation…

You believe in terms of liberty that botnets who compromise machines in order to steal data, spam and many other nefarious activities doesn't compare to one business being temporarily affected ?

That is a strange perspective I have to say.

Re: No-IP's Formal Statement on Microsoft Takedown

#27

Post by legutierr »

What I don't understand is the legal basis of Microsoft, a private entity, simply being handed over the property (the domain names) of another private entity. I understand that this is something that was ordered by a court, but under what legal theory was the order issued?

I'm not a lawyer, but I think I've got at least a basic idea of the circumstances under which the government can take someone's property. This doesn't seem to coincide with any of those potential circumstances, especially when the seizure transfers the property to another non-governmental entity.

What's more, where's the due process? No-IP seems to be saying that they didn't even know about the court case until being served with the order. Did they really not have the opportunity to contest this?

EDIT: To summarize some of the documents people have linked to and analyzed below, it looks like Microsoft was granted a temporary restraining order under "Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(b)", which allows for such orders to be granted without providing notice as long as certain requirements are met.

Microsoft was required to post a $200,000.00 bond, which is supposed to pay for any damages incurred by No-IP, and No-IP will be granted the ability to contest the order in court on July 10, and maybe earlier. However, it is clear that No-IP knew nothing about even the lawsuit until they lost control of their domains, as this was specifically ordered by the court.

Also, there is no answer as to whether transferring control over domain names from a defendant to a plaintiff is something that courts should be empowered to do as part of a temporary restraining order. I hope a lawyer with some knowledge in this area can chime in to answer that question.

Re: No-IP's Formal Statement on Microsoft Takedown

#28

Post by readme »

DangerousPie wrote: post #13
ddod wrote: post #9

The comments here are surprisingly pro-Microsoft. I'd personally rather deal with spam and botnets over a corporation legally being able to take over the DNS of other companies due to the actions of users of a service. Despite pretty clear slippery-slope arguments, I recognize this isn't a universal opinion. There are many people who would like to curb cyber-bullying at the expense of freedom of speech or curb terror…

It wasn't actually due to the actions of their user though, was it? It was because of the actions of NoIP themselves, who did not act to prevent abuse by their users. From what Cisco and Microsoft are reporting NoIP is (was?) a hotspot of botnet activity. If NoIP was not doing anything against that Microsoft's lawsuit doesn't sound that unreasonable. How this was actually implemented in the end (MS just taking over t…

You might just as well say it is the IANA's fault for issuing the IP addresses the malware authors used, or Ford's fault for building the getaway car used in a bank robbery.

Re: No-IP's Formal Statement on Microsoft Takedown

#29

Post by shawnz »

Omniusaspirer wrote: post #19
ntakasaki wrote: post #2

They also deny Cisco's allegations here. http://www.noip.com/blog/2014/02/12/cisco-malware-report/ It doesn't compute that Cisco is casting blame on them and Microsoft got a court order when all they had to do is send an email. It's kind of strange, they're probably unable to keep up with the abuse reports and validating them or something. There are a lot of dynamic DNS providers so why do the bad guys pick them for…

Presumably because they have a free basic service if you use one of their subdomains. While other companies I'm not aware of might offer the same I've yet to stumble across them.

DynDNS and afraid, which as far as I know are the next two most popular services like this, both have free options.

EDIT: Looks like DynDNS recently got rid of their free offering. I wonder if that was related to this?

Re: No-IP's Formal Statement on Microsoft Takedown

#30

Post by threeseed »

notsoMicrosoft wrote: post #8
norswap wrote: post #5

Wait, how can a company seize the domains of another?

This is America. With enough money, you can do whatever you want.

You can see it that way.

Others will see it as Microsoft proactively removing bots and spam.

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