September 19, 2003 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Popular Enterprises LLC, the parent company of search provider Netster.com (Netster.com) reportedly filed a $100 million anti-trust law suit this week in federal court in Orlando Florida against VeriSign Inc., calling the company's controversial new SiteFinder service a violation of fair competition laws.
Earlier this week, VeriSign, operator of the registries for the .com and .net domains, launched the new service, which redirects Web surfers who type in misspelled or nonexistent domain names to a VeriSign Web page offering alternatives and paid-placement links. The service was met with an outcry from Internet users and service providers who feel that VeriSign has overstepped its authority as registry operator.
The lawsuit alleges antitrust violations, unfair competition and violations of the Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices act, and seeks an order for VeriSign to stop employing the service.
The suit says VeriSign has been using its position as operator of the registry to an unfair advantage. In addition to allowing VeriSign to profit from the redirected searches, says Popular Enterprises, the SiteFinder service has also been interfering with similar services, such as Netster's SmartBrowse and tools run by Internet service providers like AOL and MSN.
VeriSign has not yet commented on the law suit, but has defended the service, saying it provides a helpful tool to Web surfers. The company says that .com and .net domains are mistyped 20 million times every day, and that services like SiteFinder can help to improve users' Web navigation.
As part of the backlash against SiteFinder, this week DNS software developer The Internet Software Consortium issued a patch to its BIND software that allowed ISPs to block the SiteFinder service from affecting their customers.
