Judge Defers AlterNIC Action

["Richard J. Sexton" <richard@sexton.org>]

(Shamelessly lifted from wired.com -
http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/5414.html)

                     Judge Defers AlterNIC Action

                     by Rebecca Vesely and Michael Stutz 
                     11:57am  23.Jul.97.PDT A federal judge Wednesday
                     refused to grant a restraining order against
                     AlterNIC's Eugene Kashpureff despite his
                     suggestion that he agrees with Network Solutions
                     Inc. that the domain guerrilla has interfered with
                     the operation of its InterNIC domain-name registry.

                     "It is clear to me that irrevocable damage has
                     been done, but your documents aren't specific
                     enough as to what that damage is," said Judge
                     Albert V. Bryan of the Eastern District Court of
                     Virginia in Alexandria. 

                     Network Solutions, of Herndon, Virginia, alleges
                     that Kashpureff, owner of the private domain-name
                     registry AlterNIC, has waged several attacks on its
                     InterNIC system over the past few weeks. Network
                     Solutions is sole caretaker of the generic top-level
                     domains .com, .net, and .org - a situation
                     Kashpureff calls a monopoly and has attempted to
                     derail. 

                     Kashpureff fooled most of the Net's nameservers
                     into changing the identity of the www.netsol.com
                     and www.internic.net machines to that of his own.
                     Due to the distributed nature of the network, some
                     servers may still resolve to AlterNIC, even though
                     for Kashpureff, the jig is up. 

                     "We are powerless to do something," John
                     Christian Lowe of the Washington, DC, law firm
                     Finnigan and Henderson, representing Network
                     Solutions, told the court. "He [Kashpureff] is
                     showing no respect for our company, for what he
                     calls 'netizens' or people on the Internet, or for this
                     court." 

                     Network Solutions requested that the court set a
                     US$10,000 bond and that a restraining order be
                     granted immediately. But Bryan instead ordered
                     the company to specify its grievances against
                     Kashpureff and resubmit them to the court.
                     Another hearing has been set for 1 August. 

                     Kashpureff, who lives in Washington state, was
                     not present at the hearing and has not retained an
                     attorney, though Lowe said he notified the
                     defendant of the actions being taken against him. 

                     "This is a bit one-sided," Bryant said. 

                     A less-than-chipper-sounding Kashpureff on
                     Tuesday denied Network Solutions' allegations
                     and said he had shut down his own service. "We
                     do not intend to redirect the domain names of the
                     InterNIC or of Network Solutions any longer and
                     will promise the court not to do that, and hence
                     they don't have any reason to take any immediate
                     action against me." 

                     "The part I really want you to know, and the part
                     that I want you to care about," Kashpureff
                     explained, is the contents of the 42-page civil
                     action itself - which called for a complete seizure
                     of all his computer equipment, including any data
                     on magnetic storage. 

                     "They're turning me into a child pornographer," he
                     said. "Read just how bad they're trying to rape me
                     and the public - there's some very inflammatory
                     statements about .com, .net, and .org in this
                     document itself." 

                     While most network operators do not support
                     Kashpureff's actions, his protest of the InterNIC
                     monopoly strikes a common chord in many,
                     including Aaron Abelard, who cites Network
                     Solutions' unwillingness to work toward a
                     compromise in allowing more top-level domains. 

                     Karl Denninger, president of MCS Inc., which also
                     provides alternative top-level domains, agrees. But
                     he certainly doesn't agree with Kashpureff's
                     tactics. "I do not support this kind of terrorism," he
                     said. "This won't make me very popular with
                     anyone over at the AlterNIC camp, but I hope he
                     does go to jail." 

--
richard@sexton.org   (forgive me if I'm terse, I answer hundreds of e-mails
a day)

            The right to revolt has sources deep in our history.
                -- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas