No Such Weblog

According to Kevin Murphy (pointer from Bret Fausett), Verisign is internally testing a mechanism that would return resource records in response to queries for non-existing domain names; if the query comes from a web browser, the effect would be that users are redirected to a web page that presents existing sites to them.

Users and developers are deprived of the ability to choose themselves how to deal with such a situation -- by choosing web browsers that do smart things about non-existing domain names, by configuring their web browser to feed the bad address into their favorite search engine, or by just fixing their typo.

If the query does not come from a web browser, the behaviour described just means returning wrong error diagnostics, and creating another problem to route around.

What Verisign is testing here (and Neustar has "tested" in May, in a live registry) is a fundamental breach of the Internet's most fundamental design principle. And it certainly won't improve users' surfing experience.

If Verisign was actually striving to improve user experience, then it would not overload existing query types with new and bad semantics, but would suggest a new "fuzzy" DNS query type to which a name server can respond with records that point to possibly corrected query strings -- if the user's browser chooses to ask for them.

Elana Broitman has posted a presentation on what she calls Interim Whois Solutions. I'd rather talk about dirty hacks; some of the proposed steps -- like returning GIFs over port 43 WHOIS -- simply don't look feasible.

Representatives of the US government are going to have a conference call on WHOIS with members of the registrars' constituency on 17 September. Government-side participants: Lader, Sene, Layton (NTIA); Mithal (FTC); LoGalbo (DOJ); Larsen (IRS); Cotton (USPTO).

... or: When is a hyperlink a hyperlink?

Alexander Svensson continues to cover the development of .kids.us, and has a close look at the first site established there. Particularly fascinating -- with regard to policies in place that forbid hyperlinks that take a user outside of the kids.us domain-- is a links page Alexander has found -- it points to web sites outside .kids.us with content about American presidents. Instead of using actual hyperlinks, the URLs are simply listed there, as part of the page text.

Update: Jeff Neumann responds (thanks) that listing web sites in the way it's done on the Smithsonian's page is perfectly acceptable in .kids.us. Fascinating.