After nearly a two-week spree, the hijack of the InterNIC Web site
ended when a lawyer representing Network Solutions Inc. delivered a
civil action lawsuit against Eugene Kashpureff, who is scheduled to
appear in court today at 9 a.m. EDT.
Kashpureff, operator of the renegade top-level domain registry
AlterNIC, fooled most of the Net's nameservers into changing the
identity of the www.netsol.com and www.internic.net machines to that
of his own. Due to the distributed nature of the network, DNS may
still resolve to AlterNIC through some nameservers - even though for
Kashpureff, the gig is up.
"I turned it off at 12 p.m. yesterday when that lawyer called me,"
Kashpureff said Tuesday, not sounding as chipper as he did in earlier
times. Network Solutions Inc. filed suit in US District Court in
Alexandria, Virginia, seeking to shut down Kashpureff.
Kashpureff denies most of the allegations and accusations. "I haven't
had time to get ready [for the hearing], due to the nature and the
speed of it," he said. "We do not intend to redirect the domain names
of the InterNIC or of Network Solutions any longer and will promise
the court not to do that, and hence they don't have any reason to take
any immediate action against me."
Network Solutions, which is still in its pre-IPO quiet period, refused
to confirm or deny anything: "We still have no comment on that
situation," a spokesperson said. But apparently, it is swift and
vehement action that Network Solutions has called for.
"The part I really want you to know, and the part that I want you to
care about," Kashpureff explains, is the contents of the 42-page civil
action itself - which calls for a complete seizure of all his computer
equipment, including any data on magnetic storage.
"They're turning me into a child pornographer," he said. "Read just
how bad they're trying to rape me and the public - there's some very
inflammatory statements about .com, .net, and .org in this document
itself."
While most network operators do not support Kashpureff's actions, his
protest of the InterNIC monopoly strikes a common chord in many,
including Aaron Abelard, who cites Network Solutions' unwillingness to
work toward a compromise in allowing more top-level domains.
Karl Denninger, president of MCS Inc., which also < provides
alternative top-level domains, agrees. But he certainly doesn't agree
with Kashpureff's tactics. "I do not support this kind of terrorism,"
he said. "This won't make me very popular with anyone over at the
AlterNIC camp, but I hope he does go to jail."