PSA: No-IP got shot by Microsoft's Nerf Cannon

Uhhh/

MS, you screwed up, big time. Thanks for taking away my free, convenient domains I was using for personal, non-illegal use. I hope no-ip sues the hell out of you.
 
Dark Shade said:
Uhhh/

MS, you screwed up, big time. Thanks for taking away my free, convenient domains I was using for personal, non-illegal use. I hope no-ip sues the hell out of you.
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No-IP has added new domains to the free tier, so you can get back up and running, albeit with a different domain name. I'm frustrated as my hostname from them has been in continuous use for at least 10-12 years...
 
This is quite frustrating...

Other than a cynical answer of "They have lots of money", can someone that understands the legal system a bit more help me understand how a seperate company that has nothing to do with a domain name can request seize of that namespace?
 
dbwillis said:
That sucks, its all of no-ip domains?
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It seems to be most, if not all, domains that were offered in their free tier. The Enhanced/high roller tier domains appear to be unaffected.

(Its a bit frustrating to me that they won't explicitly state the domains that were affected)
 
My gaming group has been using No-IP's servegame.com domain for our teamspeak and game hosting duties for probably 10+ years at this point and all of a sudden nobody can connect. Total jerk move by MS to unilaterally do this, but No-IP wasn't incredibly forthcoming with the info either. None of the guys I know using their redirect service (myself included) have received an e-mail about this, so it wasn't until we really went hunting that we were able to learn about this.

Hope this gets resolved quickly
 
Hey look at that, I can't access my home computer anymore. Thanks Obama... Err Microsoft.
 
Thanks David_Schroth, I did pay for an account, so I think my customers names are good (workisboring.com), ill have to check tonight.
Wish No-Ip would provide a list of whats been grabbed by MS
 
It's pretty simple, don't run a service that's well known to be a haven for malicious intent and pretend that your abuse policy is effective when in reality the sheer number of malicious users and the speed at which those accounts are created far outweighs any checks you put in place.
 
Activate: AMD said:
My gaming group has been using No-IP's servegame.com domain for our teamspeak and game hosting duties for probably 10+ years at this point and all of a sudden nobody can connect. Total jerk move by MS to unilaterally do this, but No-IP wasn't incredibly forthcoming with the info either. None of the guys I know using their redirect service (myself included) have received an e-mail about this, so it wasn't until we really went hunting that we were able to learn about this.

Hope this gets resolved quickly
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I learned about it in an email, but it was routed to my spam folder in my gmail account.
 
Looks like the other free ones aren't helping me either. I hope they resolve this, as my router only supported no-IP and Dynamic DNs.
 
no-ip has inherited all of the freeloading scammers and criminals that DynDNS has been getting rid of for a few years, and apparently no-ip's abuse department couldn't handle it. oh well.

use a free service, you get what you pay for.
 
Damn, guess i'm gonna have to pony up $25 a year now, rather go back to Dyndns, at least they notified me of the disconnect and offered a discount at the time.
 
Cmustang87 said:
This is quite frustrating...

Other than a cynical answer of "They have lots of money", can someone that understands the legal system a bit more help me understand how a seperate company that has nothing to do with a domain name can request seize of that namespace?
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Here is the lawsuit information:

http://www.noticeoflawsuit.com/


I am not a lawyer but I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express a couple of times..

From reading through everything so far from what I can tell is MS was granted an injunction against NoIP for mainly trademark infringement of Microsoft and Windows. NoIP had numerous sub-domains with those trademarks and apparently failed to respond or take action when MS complained.

It also looks like NoIP failed to respond to abuse reports and remove malware/scam domains.
 
k1pp3r said:
Interesting, mine just came back online.
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From what I understand is that MS is routing malware / bot traffic to a sinkhole and trying to route legitimate traffic to their original or intended destinations.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsof...ime-epidemic-in-tenth-malware-disruption.aspx

"We have been in contact with Microsoft today. They claim that their intent is to only filter out the known bad hostnames in each seized domain, while continuing to allow the good hostnames to resolve. However, this is not happening. Apparently, the Microsoft infrastructure is not able to handle the billions of queries from our customers." from NoIp blog
 
Since when does Microsoft have the right to seize stuff from people?

This comes to show how the internet is so broken. A single organization should not be able to just take something like a domain away like that. We need more decentralization.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Since when does Microsoft have the right to seize stuff from people?

This comes to show how the internet is so broken. A single organization should not be able to just take something like a domain away like that. We need more decentralization.
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Since money, and since corporations. It doesn't make grammatical sense, either.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Since when does Microsoft have the right to seize stuff from people?

This comes to show how the internet is so broken. A single organization should not be able to just take something like a domain away like that. We need more decentralization.
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Since the American trademark or copyright system was created....

Your or my government can do the same thing if they wanted.
 
klank said:
Since the American trademark or copyright system was created....

Your or my government can do the same thing if they wanted.
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Comes to show how retarded the system is. As usual megacorporations can do whatever the hell they want to crush the small guys, and they are backed by the corrupt government.

Though I did not realize any company could do it, I thought it was only agencies like the FBI, RIAA, MPAA etc.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Comes to show how retarded the system is. As usual megacorporations can do whatever the hell they want to crush the small guys, and they are backed by the corrupt government.

Though I did not realize any company could do it, I thought it was only agencies like the FBI, RIAA, MPAA etc.
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The company didn't do it....MS filed a lawsuit with an injunction, the court granted the injunction due to apparent infringement. A small company could do the same thing if they filed a lawsuit and had evidence of wrong doing.
 
This would explain why my personal web address (uses .bounceme.net) I use for Minecraft and Starbound servers won't connect.

Dammit Microsoft.

I think it might be worth it just to pay the $30-$35/year for a registered web address to not go through this hassle.
 
10 bucks a year for a domain from namecheap. Create as many dynamic DNS entries as you want.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Comes to show how retarded the system is. As usual megacorporations can do whatever the hell they want to crush the small guys, and they are backed by the corrupt government.

Though I did not realize any company could do it, I thought it was only agencies like the FBI, RIAA, MPAA etc.
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Read through the briefs, it's interesting. It looks as if MS filed an Ex Parte, which would allow the court to act without full notice being given to the defendant. Their reasons are pretty sound; prior notice would allow the malware authors to adapt, rendering MS's attempts meaningless. Further, it looks as though MS only seized the free domains, with the assumption that because it's free there was no monetary harm.

The last element I'm looking for that they'd have had to have proven is that noip was unresponsive to resolving this situation. If they proved that, then the ex parte and their motion was justified and warranted ( I think ).
 
XOR != OR said:
Read through the briefs, it's interesting. It looks as if MS filed an Ex Parte, which would allow the court to act without full notice being given to the defendant. Their reasons are pretty sound; prior notice would allow the malware authors to adapt, rendering MS's attempts meaningless. Further, it looks as though MS only seized the free domains, with the assumption that because it's free there was no monetary harm.

The last element I'm looking for that they'd have had to have proven is that noip was unresponsive to resolving this situation. If they proved that, then the ex parte and their motion was justified and warranted ( I think ).
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I am a paid customer that was only using the free domains as I had the domains for a long time prior to paying for the service (mostly because it was a great sale and I was tired of renewing the inactivity alert on it manually). To me, even just nerfing the "free" domains causes monetary damages to NoIP as they likely have a number of customers like myself that will be requesting compensation.
 
I don't feel sorry for anyone using a shared domain free or paid. All it takes is one DMCA or other type of abuse complaint to bring an entire domain along with sub domains offline.

It is amusing to see so many businesses commenting on No-IP's facebook stating that they are losing business due to MS. When in fact they are losing business due to their cheapness or laziness to purchase a proper domain and add the dynamic service where required.
 
klank said:
I don't feel sorry for anyone using a shared domain free or paid. All it takes is one DMCA or other type of abuse complaint to bring an entire domain along with sub domains offline.

It is amusing to see so many businesses commenting on No-IP's facebook stating that they are losing business due to MS. When in fact they are losing business due to their cheapness or laziness to purchase a proper domain and add the dynamic service where required.
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Seriously it's not expensive at all. A child can afford to pay the annual for actual domain service.
 
Cmustang87 said:
Other than a cynical answer of "They have lots of money", can someone that understands the legal system a bit more help me understand how a seperate company that has nothing to do with a domain name can request seize of that namespace?
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It's easy to answer. Government. Yeah, fascism is amazing like that. Just because it's your property doesn't mean it's your property. Hello! We all signed that incredibly legitimate and binding social contract with our very own baby blood.
 
klank said:
The company didn't do it....MS filed a lawsuit with an injunction, the court granted the injunction due to apparent infringement. A small company could do the same thing if they filed a lawsuit and had evidence of wrong doing.
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A small company couldn't do it. Microsoft has violated many companies IP, but none of them could have ever shutdown MS. That just wouldn't happen.
 
klank said:
I don't feel sorry for anyone using a shared domain free or paid. All it takes is one DMCA or other type of abuse complaint to bring an entire domain along with sub domains offline.

It is amusing to see so many businesses commenting on No-IP's facebook stating that they are losing business due to MS. When in fact they are losing business due to their cheapness or laziness to purchase a proper domain and add the dynamic service where required.
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True but if they can take noip's domain they can take yours too, the fact that companies can do this is a huge issue and shows that we really need to move towards a decentralized internet system.
 
I think of hackers and malware writers like I think of spiders: if it got em, who cares if it burned the house down. I'm fine with MS's actions on this one.
 
Red Squirrel said:
True but if they can take noip's domain they can take yours too, the fact that companies can do this is a huge issue and shows that we really need to move towards a decentralized internet system.
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Do you realize what a nightmare it would be to have a decentralized internet? The hackers would be running it completely within two years, and nobody but the hackers would be able to do anything. We're getting there with our current internet.
 
Or maybe we need to just take this for what it is... a specific incident with specific consequences.

Maybe, just maybe, we should consider that the real problem was NoIP hosting thousands of nefarious servers and not doing anything about it when they MOST LIKELY (face it) knew what they were.

We're going to get bent out of shape over temporary disruption of service for a free or nearly-free dynamic site hosting company? It's not like this isn't going to get fixed. And "trouble" like this kind of goes hand in hand with the "free" hosts.
 
dgingeri said:
Do you realize what a nightmare it would be to have a decentralized internet? The hackers would be running it completely within two years, and nobody but the hackers would be able to do anything. We're getting there with our current internet.
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That's one of the things that makes the concept very hard to achieve. It's being worked on here: https://projectmeshnet.org/

Though, that is more or less decentralizing the lower layer. Need some decentralized services on the network too. Some sub projects going on using bitcoin as an incentive to host nodes as well. Lot of interesting ideas floating around. Though with net neutrality now dead the only option will be to actually do a fully physical meshnet, but it would be incredibly expensive, and governments could still stop it as it would require fibre to be run on public land. Can't go all wireless, the performance would not be there.
 
Red Squirrel said:
True but if they can take noip's domain they can take yours too, the fact that companies can do this is a huge issue and shows that we really need to move towards a decentralized internet system.
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Yea your domain could be taken down, but it's not going to be because some random asshole out of 4 million sub-domains.

No-IP failed to remove the malware domains or even the 90+ trademark infringement domains. MS and other companies (Cisco, OpenDNS, etc.) have also tried contacting No-IP to for abusive domains but No-IP did not apparently do enough. So in the end I think MS did the right thing.
 
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