Re: ad.doubleclick.net missing from DNS?

[Paul Vixie <vixie () vix com>]

Paul Vixie wrote:

> on the other hand, if you do this for a nameserver that your customers
> depend on, then there is probably some liability for either trademark
> infringement, tortious interference with prospective economic advantage,
> and the gods alone know what else.  if you do this, keep it to a server
> you run on 127.0.0.1 and ensure that you are its only user.

LarrySheldon () cox net ("Laurence F. Sheldon, Jr.") said:

> Where is it written that a server has to carry other people's non-
> revenue advertizing or links to it?

what i've discovered, not by going to law school but by being sued a lot,
is that "prospective economic advantage" means whatever a judge thinks it
should mean, and "tortious interference" with same ought to be carefully
considered.  it's the 21st century, and domain names are trademarks in all
but fact.  if you cause someone else's domain name to stop working for a
population larger than yourself, and if the domainholder would have made
money had you not done so, then you could be in for a rough ride.  don't
take my word for it -- if you're an ISP, you've got a lawyer you can ask.

Chris Brenton said:

> Guess I don't see this as being any different than restricting access
> based on port number or IP address. If your SLA empowers you to
> selectively block traffic, what's the difference?

convincing a judge that your customers were aware of that provision when
they signed on is "hard".  convincing a judge that your customers had the
ability to choose a different isp at a similar price/feature level but
without this selective blocking is "very hard".  you might get a sane and
technically savvy judge of the civil libertarian variety -- it's a dice
roll.  all i'm saying is, talk to your lawyer before you do it.

Paul Vixie also wrote:

> on the one hand, you'd need a wildcard A RR at *.doubleclick.net to
> achieve this result.  the above text does not mention this, and leads
> one to believe that an apex A RR at doubleclick.net would have an effect.

Larry Sheldon then said:

> Depends what you are trying to do. I'm perfectly happy to have
> *.doubleclick.net return a "host not found", so a file with no A records
> works fine for me.

For me that results in broken-picture icons where the ad content went.  I
prefer to redirect my browser's fetches of this content to a local
webserver that always returns empty but syntactically valid objects.  For
that I'd need a wildcard.  YMMV.
-- 
Paul Vixie