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Comment by jpgvm | Hacker News Reader

I don't agree with the precedent set here but it does seem No-IP was doing a pretty bad job of responding to mass abuse.

While I do take issue to the actions of Microsoft and the courts I also think No-IP hasn't done themselves any favours and are at least partially to blame for this coming to pass.

It stands to reason that it's close to impossible to create a free service that is impervious to abuse however it's still their responsibility to avoid mass abuse of their platform to orchestrate botnets.

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That responsibility is not absolute, and could be interpreted differently in the frameworks of ethicality, legality, economics, and liberty.

Ethically, I think you're correct that it's their responsibility to do what they can.

Legally, the court in this situation thought it was somehow Microsoft's responsibility to fix it.

Economically, I'd say being held liable to what users do on your platform will hurt innovation and competition.

In terms of liberty, botnets and spam don't seem like they compare to an attack on someone's business, their users, and their freedom to operate independently.

I guess you can choose which perspective makes the most sense to you, personally.

You believe in terms of liberty that botnets who compromise machines in order to steal data, spam and many other nefarious activities doesn't compare to one business being temporarily affected ?

That is a strange perspective I have to say.

It is even more strange because botnets are the source of most DDoS, so there are ton of companies out there who have been crippled by DDoS and/or blackmail.

In terms of liberty, one crime doesn't excuse another, especially when they're not directly related. If I manufacture cigarettes and someone dies of lung cancer, I could be ethically liable but my liberty to make cigarettes shouldn't be impacted. If someone uses YouTube to upload copyrighted things, should YouTube have its domain stolen and its users unable to use the site any more?

I don't think cigarettes are the best example because there is no use for them that doesn't potentially invoke the harmful effects for every single user. YouTube, ISPs, and dynamic domain providers have valid, widespread, legitimate, harmless uses, so YouTube is a better analogy IMO.

If one accepts the idea that courts should be seizing entire swaths of domains just to fight malware, it's still absolutely bizarre that Microsoft themselves should be given control of them, rather than an independent policing body. If there are to be Internet police, they should be independent of any one corporation, industry group, or government.

>>> In terms of liberty, one crime doesn't excuse another,

Except it is not a crime if it's done under lawful authority (by definition) or in self-defense. Otherwise you'd argue imprisoning a murderer or using force to defend your life is a crime, because outside of these circumstances limiting one's freedom of movement or using force on somebody is a crime.

>>> If someone uses YouTube to upload copyrighted things, should YouTube have its domain stolen and its users unable to use the site any more?

If that's the only thing his domain is used for, it very well may happen, and similar things already happened. Seizures of domains used for illegal activities are commonplace.

I don't believe they should be held liable for the actions of malicious users, that would violate all sorts of safe harbour provisions.

However, safe harbour does atleast imply reasonable effort to curb mass abuse.

Responding case by case is nice but it's not the same. As it leaves open the proverbial DDoS attack where botnets just create so many domains that the process put in place to resolve them is too burdensome for companies like Microsoft (or even law enforcement) to reasonably utilize.

Hence if you have a platform that is vulnerable to such abuses you should have systems in place to handle this at a bigger scale than single case by case means.

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