Editing Site Finder (section)

==Issues and controversy== 
There was a storm of controversy among network operators and competing domain registrars, particularly on the influential [[North American Network Operators' Group|NANOG]] and [[ICANN]] mailing lists, some of whom asserted:
* that the redirection was contrary to the proper operation of the [[Domain Name System|DNS]], ICANN policy, and the Internet architecture in general;
* that VeriSign breached its trust with the Internet community by using technical architecture for marketing purposes;
* that the redirection broke various [[Request for Comments|RFC]]s and disrupted existing Internet services, such as [[email]] relay and filtering ([[Spamming|spam]] filters were not able to detect the validity of domain names);
* that the redirection amounted to [[typosquatting]] where the unregistered domain being resolved is a spelling mistake for a famous registered domain;
* that VeriSign abused its technical control over the .com and .net domains by exerting a ''de facto'' monopoly control;
* that VeriSign may have been in breach of its contracts for running the .com and .net domains;
* that the Site Finder service assumed that all DNS traffic was caused by Web clients, ignoring the fact that DNS is used by other applications such as networked [[Printer (computing)|printer]]s, [[File Transfer Protocol|FTP]] software, and dedicated communications applications. If users of these applications accidentally entered a wrong host name, instead of a meaningful "host not found" error they would get a "request timed out" error, making it look like the server existed but is not responding. No statement by VeriSign in support of Site Finder even acknowledged the existence of DNS traffic not caused by Web clients,{{Citation needed|date=February 2007}} although they published implementation details which mentioned this traffic.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20041109202247/http://www.verisign.com/static/002702.pdf VeriSign Site Finder implementation] VeriSign Naming and Directory Services, August 27, 2003</ref>
* that Site Finder contained an [[end-user license agreement]] which stated that the user accepts the terms by using the service—but since mistyping an address automatically caused the service to be used, users could not refuse to accept the terms.

Others were concerned that the Site Finder service was written entirely in [[English language|English]] and therefore was not accessible by non-English readers.

The [[Internet Architecture Board]] composed a document detailing many of the technical arguments against registry-level wildcards;<ref>[http://www.iab.org/documents/docs/2003-09-20-dns-wildcards.html IAB Commentary: Architectural Concerns on the use of DNS Wildcards] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110530032303/http://www.iab.org/documents/docs/2003-09-20-dns-wildcards.html |date=2011-05-30 }}, September 19, 2006</ref> this was used by ICANN as part of its supporting arguments for its action.