I suppose I can share parts of a story. I went to use a legacy /16 we had only to see in-addrs fail. Checking the Internic/Arin registry showed no entry. Upon contacting the NIC I was told "Prove it's yours." I said "you're the guys with the database, and WHOIS isn't showing it, put it back and I'll prove it's mine." Feel free to find 128.65.0/16 anywhere. Let me know who you think it belongs to. Ehud

At 08:46 AM 3/4/1999 -0800, "Gregory A. Carter" <omni@dynmc.net> wrote:

...

Have a guy that had this emailed from his ISP. If this is in fact true we all could have some very unhappy customers in the comming days. I haven't personally experienced any troubles yet form any customers but I plan to keep an eye out. I'd also be interested to see if anyone else can confirm this report or has further details.

Greg

---------------------------------------------------------- Over the weekend the Internic, the registry that handles all .com, .org, and .net domain names, had a power outage. Allegedly, their backup generators actually made the situation worse, computers crashed, and data was lost. They won't officially admit to it, but word from some of the bigger ISPs is that approximately 18,000 domains were inadvertantly deleted. It seems to have mostly effected domains that were coming due for renewal in March. IF you have a domain name hosted with us, please check http://rs.internic.net/cgi-bin/whois to make sure it is still registered. If you have any questions, just reply to this email. -----------------------------------------------------------

This is partly true, but I am sure it had nothing to do with a power outage. InterNIC did, indeed, drop over 18,000 domain names on the night of Sunday February 28. This affected at least 3 names controlled by my organization, all of which were due for renewal during the month of March. I am aware of one other ISP who lost 220 names at the same time. I believe most, if not all, of those names were likewise due for renewal during March.

NSI is not admitting much, as is to be expected. But I can tell you that they did an emergency root server update at my insistance late Monday night, just as they had done a while back after they messed up AOL.COM. But they even screwed that up by putting in erroneous information for the domain servers associated with at least one of my domain names.

Note that these involve domains that were paid in full to some date in March and would be coming due for renewal during the month, but were instead dropped even before their renewal date. Contractually we have 30 days from the due date to make payment. Only after that date should InterNIC have the right to terminate a domain, and that should only take place after a reasonable grace period of being "on-hold."

Again. This involves domains that were paid in full, and inspite of that fact InterNIC removed the domains in clear violation of their "contract." Their attitude toward most of those involved is one of, "Tough sh*t!" without even caring that they are in the wrong or that they are destroying people's lives and businesses.

That isn't earth-shattering news, as they have maintained such an attitude for years. What is news is the fact that they seem to be deliberately embarking on a new campaign of extortion to the benefit of their new worldNIC.net domain registration "service." As you may know they will soon lose their monopoly as other companies are going to be involved in maintaining the domain name registry. Gearing up for that eventuallity, NSI has started registering names under their new domain at worldNIC.net. Apparently they are trying to move some of the larger consumers of domain names to their new service, and at the same time they are raising the stakes.

If you've been in this business very long you will recall that when we first started having to pay for domain names it was $100 for the first 2 years. Then it dropped to $70. Do you know why? It is my understanding that the extra $15 was supposed to be saved in an 'Intellectual Infrastructure' account, pursuant to NSI's agreement with the National Science Foundation when it took over from NSF the domain name registry. That never happened, and at one point there was talk of NSI having to issue refunds of all the overpayments. That never happened either. The point is, we now pay $70 for the first 2 years and $35 annually thereafter.

Now check out http://www.worldnic.net and notice that Network Solutions is raising the price to $119 per domain name. Now we have a choice. We can register a name through Network Solutions at InterNIC.net for $70, or we can register a name through Network Solutions at WorldNIC.net for $119.00. Now there's one very creative way to break up a monopoly. Can you spell R I P - O F F ?

One victim of this scam was told yesterday, by someone at InterNIC.net, that she would have to go to WorldNIC.net <http://www.worldnic.net> to re-register the 220 domains that had been improperly terminated. The domains in question had already been paid for, with renewals coming due sometime in March. Examine the economics there. 220 domain renewals at $35 is $7700. Compare that with having to start over with new 2 year registrations at $119 each. That's $26,180, a rip-off of $18,480. The Internet has long been called the Information Super-Highway, and now NSI has learned the art of HIGHWAY ROBBERY.

Hard to believe? Well, it should be hard to believe that they could even conceive this scam, much less get away with it. But this is what really happened this week since last Sunday.

I've also been told that another 7,000 domain names were dropped Monday night, bringing the total to 25,000 domains. Multiply that by $119 and you can clearly understand NSI's motivation. That amounts to close to $3,000,000. Three million reasons for InterNIC to screw with your domains. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. If they are not stopped, this could start to run into some "real money."

You could be their next victim if something is not done immediately to stop this practice.

In the meantime NSI denies any financial responsibility for their errors. Contractually their liability is supposedly limited to $500 per domain name, but try to get it from them. I called to demand compensation and got the expected run around, only to be told flatly that there was nothing I could do about it. We'll see about that.

At the very least their scam has been exposed for what it is. Perhaps that will end the practice. Yet, somehow I am not so gullible as to believe that they won't continue the scam in some form.

More information on the matter can be found at http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article/0,1087,3_75171,00.html and you might want to contact Gilinda Rogers <me@gilinda.com>, the victim with the 220 names. The last I had heard from her, two of the names that were stolen from her have already been registered by others. Try to imagine yourself in such a situation!