MSN Search Blocking Results For XFree86?

Slashdot | MSN Search Blocking Results For XFree86?: "MSN Search Blocking Results For XFree86?
Posted by simoniker on Wednesday March 03, @05:15PM
from the because-they-made-a-mistake? dept.
Censorship Microsoft
Peacefire writes 'Thomas Shaddack spotted this on http://www.root.cz/ (in Czech) -- if you go to http://search.msn.com/ and search for 'XFree86', it tells you that you've 'entered a search term that is likely to return adult content', and directs you to the porn search engine NightSurf.com, which lists a bunch of porn sites that ostensibly match the term 'XFree86'. If you search for 'XFree86' on Google, however, it's clear that the top matching terms returned by a normal search, are XFree86 sites, are not a bunch of porn sites. MSN is apparently blocking the specific term 'XFree86' and not just filtering on something stupid like the 'X' or the 'Free', since you can search for 'XFree85' and 'XFree87' with no problem. And search terms like 'Linux', 'AOL' and 'Macintosh' are allowed, so at least MSN hasn't simply blacklisted all competitors' keywords as 'porn', but why would they be blocking 'XFree86'?'"

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Mirror List
(Score:5, Informative)
by RobertB-DC (622190) * Alter Relationship on Wednesday March 03, @05:16PM (#8457532)
(http://www.dixie-chicks.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 11, @11:20AM)
Since it's about to get Slashdotted, here is the mirror list section from the xfree86.org [xfree86.org] site:

Web Mirrors

Our web site is very busy and often causes timed out connections. The following sites have been verified as being both accurate and reliable in their mirroring process, and so we recommend these for the best access:

Costa Rica [ulatina.ac.cr]
Copenhagen, Denmark [opensource.cph.dk]
Paris, France [ovh.net]
St. Denis, France [univ-paris8.fr]
Berlin, Germany [berlios.de]
Dortmund, Germany [desiato.de]
Athens, Greece [xfree86.ntua.gr]
Seoul, Korea [mirror.or.kr]
Amsterdam, Netherlands [kookel.org]
Bucharest, Romania [unibuc.ro]
London, United Kingdom [earth.li]

Not posting as AC 'cause the troll potential would be too high...
--
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
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Re:XFree69
(Score:5, Funny)
by Zocalo (252965) Alter Relationship on Wednesday March 03, @05:22PM (#8457623)
(http://www.zocalo.uk.com/)
I wonder if MSN has one of those big screen displays of search queries in real-time like Google does. If they do I bet there's a few people looking at the screen scrolling "XFree69" ad infinitum and wondering "WTF!?!" right about now.
--
UNIX? They're probably not even circumcised! Savages!

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They blocked other things in the past ...
(Score:5, Interesting)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 03, @06:12PM (#8458229)
Back in the good old days ... of the dot-com boom, I worked on the first web-based airline-travel reservation system ever (online in June 1995 to be precise). A while later, Microsoft got into that business, and at that point, we discovered that all traffic from MSN customers to our site was blocked. Prior to this, something like 5-10% of all hits came from there, and the drop in traffic was noticable. (We had breakdowns: AOL was about 10%-15%, Prodigy another 5%-10%, and netcom another 10%).

We talked about doing the full investigation, and suing, etc. and even called the district attorney since this seemed to be criminal behaviour to us. We decided we were too small and too poor to pursue the matter as a civil case, and I don't know what happened w/ the DA.

I thought it was pretty foul play, it was one of a number of incidents that helped turn me into a bitter Microsoft-hater
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Re:And people wonder why I worry
(Score:5, Insightful)
by Awptimus Prime (695459) Alter Relationship on Wednesday March 03, @05:51PM (#8457986)

MS gives away IE to shut down Netscape. That wasn't the crime that I thought was terrible - it was going to their OEM partners and threatening them with extra high cost of Windows if they put on Netscape.

It's refreshing to see another person not consider the Netscape fiasco a 'crime'. I was working for an ISP when IE came about. At the time, Netscape charged us $20-40 per copy that we shipped to our customers. You can imagine how quickly that adds up. When IE became an alternative, Netscape refused to negociate and lost out big-time. Meanwhile, MS would do advertising partnerships and offer a wide range of support services for free. A very tempting offer when your shop isn't making much money to begin with.

Anyway, the people at Netscape didn't move quickly to improve their browsers and, for quite some time, IE was way better concerning stability in Windows. It's not like the 2 clicks and 10 minute download destroyed them.

The anti-MS folks who always find fault in MS never really seemed to complain about Trumpet Winsock being put through the ringer by NT and 95 including their own network stacks. How about notepad.exe and calc.exe? Before that time, you could download and register shareware editors or look for freebies. I've never heard somone argue that Windows was destroying software companies by including it's own program to display image files.

But anything to do with [potentially] commerical media, such as web pages and audio/video content, grabs everyones attention and ends up with MS back in court acting confused and innocent.

I know, totally off topic. Back on topic, I promise:

I think the reason for the search results problem is likely a goof-up. Likely a low-level employee who had no idea what XFree86 is, didn't care, didn't double-check, etc before adding it to the DB. It seems reasonable that many MS employees would not be familar with Unix at all.
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Follow the money folks
(Score:5, Informative)
by Tin Foil Hat (705308) Alter Relationship on Wednesday March 03, @06:21PM (#8458322)
I'm a fairly competent internet programmer, so here's my analysis: follow the money. First thing to examine is the url that MS presents. I've split it into multiple lines for readability. Notice that it contains two other urls as parameters.

http://search.msn.com/adpassthru.aspx
?ADTARGET=http://ads.msn.com/ads/adredir.asp
%3F&TARGET=http://apps.NightSurf.com/~wsapi/nssear ch.dll
%3Fdealcode%3Dmsn%26src%3D1%26key%3D&QUERY=xfree86
&IMG=http://ads.msn.com/ads/IMGWB3/004400170001_TR .gif

This url takes you back to the msn search site so that it can record your click. The search site responds with a code 302 (Document moved) and redirects you to ads.msn.com. Here is the url for that. Notice the similarity.

http://ads.msn.com/ads/adredir.asp
?url=http%3a%2f%2fapps.NightSurf.com
%2f%7ewsapi%2fnssearch.dll
%3fdealcode%3dmsn%26src%3d1%26key%3dxfree86
&image=http://ads.msn.com/ads/IMGWB3/004400170001_ TR.gif

This ad site responds with another redirect that finally takes you to nightsurf. Here is the url for that.

http://apps.NightSurf.com/~wsapi/nssearch.dll?de al code=msn&src=1&key=xfree86

Now here's where it really gets interesting. Notice the dealcode and key parameters in particular. They would seem to imply that MSN has some kind of deal with NightSurf.

I have to conclude that NightSurf paid MSN to feature it's ad (that's what it is, not a search result) when users type in 'XFree86'. I had difficulty understanding why a porn search site would want to do something like that, so I started investigating. First stop, betterwhois.com. Here's what they have to say about NightSurf.com.

Registrant:
WebPower Inc.
ATTN: NIGHTSURF.COM
c/o Network Solutions
P.O. Box 447
Herndon, VA. 20172-0447

Domain Name: NIGHTSURF.COM

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Inc., WP av4xg8hq3ck@networksolutionsprivateregistration.co m
ATTN: NIGHTSURF.COM
c/o Network Solutions
P.O. Box 447
Herndon, VA 20172-0447
570-708-8780

It seems that this is a private listing from Network Solutions and any further investigation will have to include sending an email to the listed address.

So the question remains, why is NightSurf.com (A.K.A. Web Power, Inc.) paying Microsoft for the XFree86 keyword? Did Microsoft knowingly accept that or was it more automated? Do I or do I not have a hole in my hat?

--
No matter how many of my rights are taken away, somehow I still don't feel safe. -Frigid Monkey
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