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Comment by lhnn | Hacker News Reader

name.com has been pretty good for me for the past few months. Very easy to use.

Also: Don't get a .com/.net domain name. You don't want the US government declaring your domain to be evil and taking it off the 'net.

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I used name.com for a website once. I used them for my DNS also (because I don't know how to set up a separate DNS) and they parked there own auto-generated crap at everything except the www subdomain. Apparently, if you are savvy enough to set up your own DNS this isn't a problem, but I wouldn't use them because of this.

I think if you set up a wildcard *.mydomain.com rule to forward to your domain, you won't see their stuff.

I'm not quite sure what you mean (though I'm not arguing). I set up my own DNS manually.

Create a rackspace cloud server, grab that IP and use it in an A record on name.com.

If you're using name.com's DNS, then they've basically got a wildcard subdomain that points to a spammy domain-parked page.

So, say you have valid records for .yourdomain.com and www.yourdomain.com. Those two hosts will resolve as you would expect them, but *.yourdomain.com will resolve to a spam page.

Wow, that's pretty evil. I definitely won't be using name.com (I've been happy with Dreamhost as a registrar for years anyway, but would be interested in trying someone else in the future). Thanks for the heads up.

So, if a user came and visited my site, which was www.zideck.com (It's not there any more), they would see my web page. If they were to visit http://zideck.com they would see auto generated spam garbage that said stuff like "What you need, when you need it." In fact, ANY subdomain would result in link spam trash.

Thanks for the tip on setting up DNS. If I create a rackspace cloud server, I imagine there is something special I have to do to make it a DNS server, right? Does it just work straight out of the box?

Wait, I thought .com/.net (among others) were generic TLDs governed by ICANN? I would assume .us might fall into this warning (as would other country code TLDs), but .com and .net?

What matters is whether or not the operator of the TLD is within US jurisdiction, not the purpose of the TLD.

So, in that case, the FBI could seize any domain as long as the operator is within US jurisdiction?

Yep, pretty much.

Not exactly fair, but that's the current 'system'..

Yes, and be aware the operation of a lot of ccTLD's are outsourced to companies outside the country in question.

I don't know that much about how many are or aren't operated out of the US, but most of the generic TLD's are, and several ccTLD's definitively are too - for example .tv and .cc are operated by Verisign, and .co is operated by Neustar.

Yes.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2451302

Thanks. I still have a question, though: if the FBI can seize these domain names, does that mean they can seize any domain names? I'm a little fuzzy on the control/management scheme here.

As anyone has said elsewhere in this thread, all they are doing is strongarming the administrators of the TLDs that operate primary offices inside the USA to alter the DNS entries for specified domains they feel are being used to break the law, because that is their jurisdiction, and prevent the owner from being able to change it back.

One of the more controversial parts of SOPA is the ability of ICE/Customs to be able to "un-resolve" domain names under other TLDs and country codes. Since the USA does not have jurisdiction over Russia (as an example), there is no current way to block a filesharing or spammer operating with a .ru address without having a partnership with Russia. This aspect of SOPA would allow the USA Government to block all domain name servers from resolving that address properly, by basically poisoning the legitimate DNS entry with one that resolves to some landing page operated by ICE. They won't be able to seize the domain, but they'll make it just as worthless to anyone inside the USA.

You're right. Anything governed by ICANN. And I'm not agreeing or disagreeing about the control issue just pointing out the for example .org .us .info etc. would be in the same boat.

I don't agree with what you are saying but more importantly the same is true for .org .info .us and any tld overseen by ICANN.

On that note, does anyone know what's the case with .eu? Can ICE do the same as they've done with .com/.net?

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