Yeah, there's really no excuse for not talking to the people at the company first. The only reason I can fathom would be that if Microsoft suspected the owner of No-IP to be actually involved with the botnet operators. (Especially given that they had a previous relationship, this is inexcusable, but it shouldn't have mattered anyway.) If Microsoft had contacted them first, and No-IP had given them some reason to suspect that they were culpable, then, by all means, work through the legal system. The whole notion of sealed legal precedings, as with the FISA court, gives me the willies. It's almost like the exact opposite of what the Bill of Rights was supposed to ensure for protections of the populace against their government. How much more offensive is it that this type of action was used against a individual running a commercial company, not involved in any way with "national defense" issues?
> Yeah, there's really no excuse for not talking to the people at the company first. The only reason I can fathom would be that if Microsoft suspected the owner of No-IP to be actually involved with the botnet operators.
Or they knew that No-IP had long been aware of the abusive domains and had not done anything about them.
OpenDNS published a report on malware support domains in April 2013, identifying No-IP as the top provider of them [1]. No-IP posted a comment responding to that so we know they saw it.
Cisco published a report in February 2014 on dynamic DNS abuse [2], naming No-IP as a major provider for malware domains. No-IP posted a comment linking to a formal response on their blog [3].
The gist of their response is that they don't tolerate abuse, they actively work to find it and stomp it out, and they responsd quickly to reports sent to their abuse address, and they invite Cisco to send a report to their abuse address.
Ignoring well documented reports of abuse because they no not arrive via the right bureaucratic channel does not project the right image if you want to be seen as a white hat company.
This was an international case. The Bill of Rights of the United States of America does not apply. To impose the BoR on a non party would be a violation of their human rights, guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The US Constitution's Bill of Rights DO NOT IMPOSE ANYTHING ON PEOPLE. They are expressly written to IMPOSE ON THE GOVERNMENT. They DO NOT CONFER RIGHTS. They state certain unalienable rights of men, and RESTRICT WHAT CAN BE PASSED AS LAWS in relation to those rights. Or, they're supposed to, anyway. I don't blame you for getting it wrong. Most of the citizens of the US miss this as well. They're not a bargaining chip for "more rights." They were supposed to set hard limits against government abuse. Oh well. The NSA has made a laughingstock of the 4th Amendment in particular, and that's just an easy example.
The court was in Las Vegas, and Microsoft, No-IP and the company that was ordered to redirect the domains are all based in the US. In what sense is this an international case?
The documents were served to no-ip in Nevada, but the other parties were in an arabic-speaking country. The case was filed in multiple jurisdictions if you read the court documents. I invite you to read noticeoflawsuit.com and see what actually happened.
