DNS like IPv4 is just a protocol. Creating a new protocol that returns the same IP address as DNS along with a safety score and text description, and a list of alternative domain names with their IP's and safety scores is not a crime against humanity. And hacking the existing DNS protocol to do much the same thing can also be a reasonable thing to do.

You understand that NXDOMAIN redirectors are getting copies of cookies, right?

   wwwwwwwwwwwwwww.bankofamerica.com has address 208.69.36.132
   wwwwwwwwwwwwwww.matasano.com has address 208.69.36.132

I think that you mean access to cookies. I doubt that Comcast is stealing your Bank of America cookies, but it's troubling that they have access to them. [Not necessarily my cookies, as I'm not on Comcast, and I don't use ISP-provided DNS anyways]

That's OpenDNS, not Comcast.

IIRC, Comcast was getting into this too. I'm referring to the specific practice of NXDOMAIN redirecting. Not just OpenDNS's practices.

http://www.semicomplete.com/blog/geekery/comcast-dns-hijack-...

I think that he felt you were celebrating the practice of disabling NXDOMAIN and returning a valid IP for every request with the non-existent ones resolving to the DNS-provider's advertisement page. This very much does break DNS.

OK, to clarify I still think you should rely on the application to handle invalid domain names so you don't break email ect. The problem is when someone creates a Malware site called microsof.com and it immediately compromises the browser of anyone who mistypes the domain name. Granted, the browser could keep a copy of bad domain names and worn the user, but Norton DNS could also do that same job. After all if you are going to query a system to find the IP address it might as well tell you as much as it can when it's responding. It's a packet based network and there is close to zero overhead to doing so.

Now I would hate it if my ISP where to institute such a practice but an independent DNS that let's me avoid most malware, spoofing, and parked domain names. Count me in as long as I can opt out at any time.