VerizonSucks.com ... who would you think would own that?

VerizonSucks.com is owned by verizon. Funny story. Well maybe not funny so much as infuriating.

But first, the link, because I'm not big media making you wait for "After the Jump"! the link to investigate it yourself.

There was a story on Slashdot (news for nerds or something like that) about how an update to internet explorer was doing some sort of NXDOMAIN hijack. (It doesn't matter what that means unless you want to google it) so I tested it out. Turns out I was hijacked by my new isp, verizon.

I guess it does matter what it means if you got this far. What it is all about is "what happens when you type a domain name that doesn't exist?" Typically your browser says something like "I can't find the domain at www.wtfThisShouldBeRealBecauseItsCoolAndHipAndTrendy.com." This particular form of hijacking intercepts the NXDOMAIN request and feeds you search results that are, more than likely, paid search results. So the offending party is making money on your bad spelling. Regardless, that's what it means.

After some searching I found I could opt out of verizon's DNS hijacking by changing the dns entry on every computer in my house. So I thought I'd call and voice my displeasure at this nonsensical way to do things. This should be done at the modem/router level so I can do it once and not have to worry about changing every device in my household. Anyway, the point being, I was on the phone with the automated system for some minutes while they determined that I wanted to speak english, talk about internet, not configure mail settings, etc, and I wanted an example domain to give them in the event that they did not know what NXDOMAIN was. What better example than verizonsucks.com? Well a million better examples but I was aggravated. Turns out that particular domain is in fact taken, not much to my surprise.

My surprise was that they own it. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised though. They are out to protect their brand name. That's a big part of a corporation. Keep the name brand worth as much as possible. What would Coke do, I wonder, if a batch they made caused many people to become sick. Would they try to cover it up if the FDA wasn't involved? Probably. It would damage the name.

Maybe I'm just getting angry at the kids on my lawn in my old age but it seems to me that corporations should allow free speech instead of just buying it out. Even wal mart doesn't outright buy out the mom and pop stores, they just keep the prices low enough that mom and pop don't get any business so they have to close down.

The times they are a'changing people. The customer is no longer always right. Especially if their misspellings can lead to paid ads and search results and "domains that might say bad things about us" can lead to somewhere we already own.