After Microsoft Returns All Of No-IP's Seized Domains And Settles Lawsuit, No-IP Is Still Angry

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the reasonably-so dept

We recently wrote about Microsoft going to court and convincing a judge to (with no adversarial hearing) allow it to seize a bunch of domain names from No-IP, redirecting all traffic to them through Microsoft’s own servers. Those servers quickly encountered problems, meaning that many people who relied on No-IP’s dynamic DNS system, found that they couldn’t access their sites. Microsoft later blamed this on a “technical error” but it still appeared that the seizure effort was a gross abuse of the legal process. Remember, in the lawsuit that allowed Microsoft to seize the domains, it had claimed that No-IP parent Vitalwerks had been breaking the law.

Either way, it appears that Microsoft has now returned all the domains to No-IP and settled the lawsuit. According to a joint statement by the companies:

Microsoft has reviewed the evidence provided by Vitalwerks and enters into the settlement confident that Vitalwerks was not knowingly involved with the subdomains used to support malware. Those spreading the malware abused Vitalwerks? services.

Microsoft identified malware that had escaped Vitalwerks? detection. Upon notification and review of the evidence, Vitalwerks took immediate corrective action allowing Microsoft to identify victims of this malware. The parties have agreed to permanently disable Vitalwerks subdomains used to control the malware.

In the process of redirecting traffic to its servers for malware detection, Microsoft acknowledges that a number of Vitalwerks customers were impacted by service outages as a result of a technical error. Microsoft regrets any inconvenience these customers may have experienced.

No-IP for its part has also put out a more detailed explanation for how all of this happened. It’s worth reading. It also takes apart a number of Microsoft’s claims, including the company’s claim that, prior to returning the domains, it had “fixed” the problems people were having accessing their sites. No-IP reiterates that if Microsoft had just contacted the company first, it would have taken down the abusive customers. Clearly, even though the situation was settled, No-IP is reasonably upset that it happened in the first place:

While we are extremely pleased with the settlement terms, we are outraged by Microsoft?s tactics and that we were not able to completely and immediately restore services to the majority of our valuable customers that had been affected.

At No-IP, we are firm believers that the Internet should be free and open. We will continue to fight for the rights of our users and our business. Moving forward, we have provisioned a solution that will reduce the risk of domain seizures.

Later it notes:

We hope that Microsoft learned a lesson from this debacle and that in the future they will not seize other companies domains and will use appropriate channels to report abuse.

Wouldn’t that be nice.

Filed Under: domain seizures, dynamic dns, ex parte
Companies: microsoft, no-ip, vitalwerks