Nxdomain redirect revenue

Tue Sep 27 20:54:26 UTC 2011

On 27/09/11 7:20 AM, William Allen Simpson wrote:
>
>
>> Most likely the ISPs'  lawyers were smart enough to include a clause
>> in the ToS/AUP allowing
>> the ISP to intercept, blackhole, or redirect access to any hostname or
>> IP address.
>>
> It's not legal to insert a clause allowing criminal conduct.  There's
> no safe haven for criminal conduct.

I'm not sure that it's *illegal to insert a clause* for conduct that is 
forbidden by law.  I'm pretty sure you can claim almost anything in the 
contract.  What is illegal is enforcement of an illegal clause.  Law 
trumps contract terms - that's WHY we have civil laws - to protect 
people from unscrupulous business dealings.  And that's why most 
contracts have a clause that says if a particular clause in the contract 
is found invalid the rest of the contract still stands - because so many 
contracts DO have invalid clauses.  For example, many employment 
contracts have non-compete clauses that forbid the employee from going 
to work for a competitor.  But in many states these clauses violate the 
state's right-to-work laws.  The company lawyers KNOW the clause is 
illegal, but they insert it in the employment contracts anyway, to try 
to fool employees into thinking they will get sued if they go to work 
for a competitor.

>> The name for an ISP intercepting traffic from its own users is  not
>> "interference"  or  "DoS",
>> because they're breaking the operation of (er) only their own network.
>>
> No, they're breaking the operation of my network and my computers.  My
> network connects to their network.

But you have no recourse, their network, their rules.  (Right?)  You 
*might* have recourse if they were modifying traffic you sent to their 
customer, but in this case they are modifying traffic that originates 
FROM their customer.  I'm not convinced that redirecting this traffic is 
any different from blocking it (e.g. firewall to prevent employees from 
accessing facebook or torrents).

I believe the only entity who has recourse is the entity who is paying 
them for service - e.g. their (paying) customer.

jc