Opinion: In a bid to increase ad revenues, Earthlink hijacked the DNS system, which may cause problems for a whole slew of applications.While the debate over
net neutrality seems to have died down a bit lately, the fight's nowhere near from over.
Most of the debate has been over a many-tiered system for setting priorities for Internet traffic (usually tied to the users' ability to pay for "premium" access), the real heart of the issue comes down to something that many of never think about, much less talk about: the power that ISPs ultimately hold over all our heads.
For most of us (at least, those of us who are lucky enough to have mainly trouble-free connections), our relationship with our ISP pretty much begins and ends with paying the bill. We pay, they provide open access to the Internet. End of story, right?
Well, maybe not if you're an Earthlink subscriber. It turns out that in a bid to increase advertising revenues, Earthlink has taken it upon themselves to institute a new "feature" that re-directs mis-typed domain names ("Dead Domains") to a page that offers suggestions for the correct domain, a Yahoo search box, a whole passel o' "suggested" links, and, of course, several different ads.
"So what?" you might be saying, "This doesn't seem so bad." Well, maybe not...as long as you're surfing the Web. But as Ed Foster points out, the real issue starts to arise if you're not using a Web browser. In that case, since the DNS doesn't return an 'NXDOMAIN' domain error but instead returns the IP address of the Earthlink portal, non-Web programs that rely on that error to alert users of an incorrectly-typed domain name (such as FTP programs, video conferencing programs, or even email programs) might work in unexpected ways if given the wrong domain name.
A minor inconvenience? Not at all...it strikes right to the heart of some of the major issues facing the future of the Internet today. Notice I said "Internet." What Earthlink's doing isn't just messing with our browsers, they're messing with the very infrastructure of the Internet itself, an Internet that's become an indispensable part of the infrastructure of our economy and our lives. The 'Net's no longer a "nice-to-have" luxury for a few but rather is becoming the very fabric that holds together our information economy. Anything that messes with that isn't just wrong or annoying...it's a threat to the very thing that's made our 21st century economy possible.
Is a minor ISP's diddlings with the Net worth get so exercised about? I'd say yes...because it starkly points out how vulnerable all of us are to the companies that link us to the Internet. While the Internet may not be owned by anyone in particular, the doors in are. And those doors can be closed (or re-configured) at any time if we're not careful.
There's no doubt that the Internet has become indispensable. And while most of us think about the Internet and the Web interchangeably, we need to remember that the Web's just one layer of a vast infrastructure that increasingly connects just about everything...and will connect even more in the future. Working to maintain a level playing field by fighting for Net Neutrality and speaking out about DNS hijacking moves by ISPs like Earthlink is something that all of us need to be involved in, whether we're in the biz or not. A free and open and standards-based Internet benefits everyone.
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