The reason for doing this is simple: cash. ISPs earn money if you come to those search pages and use them to find what you are looking for. More often than not those search pages are not helpful at all. Here is why. Most of the time users know where they want to go if they mistype a url, say ghackss.net instead of ghacks.net. All that they would need to do to fix the error is by editing the url.

The page that the provider displays on the other hand uses a different url structure leaving the user with the only valid option to enter the url again in the address bar of the web browser. It would be possible to edit the url of the new page as well as it usually contains the entered domain name as a search term somewhere at the end.

Users with Internet Service Providers that redirect DNS errors have a few choices. Some ISPs have a page where the behavior can be changed manually. A second alternative would be to switch DNS servers. Again, some ISPs offer DNS servers that do not take part in those redirects but it is also viable to switch to open DNS server providers that do not redirect DNS errors.

The third option comes in the form of the No Redirect add-on for the Firefox web browser. The add-on is only suited for advanced users as it requires basic knowledge of regular expression to configure new Internet Service Providers. It comes with a few pre-configured including Verizon, Rogers and Earthlink but if the ISP is not among them it would be necessary to add the search page to the list of available ones. This is not as difficulty as it sounds though as it is possible to simply copy and edit the regular expression of the already included service providers and websites.

If the ISP is added properly the default “problem loading page” or “not found” page will be displayed instead of the redirected search page of the ISP. The main benefit of this is that it is now easy to edit the url that has been entered to visit the desired website.

No Redirect not only takes care of Internet Service Provider redirects but also to stop so called smart error pages. Smart error pages are used by some websites instead of the usual 404 error pages when a page cannot be found. You might have seen those at Microsoft.com for example where Microsoft displays all kind of “did you mean” information instead of an error message.

The final option – one which I was not able to get working – is the ability to always preview shortened urls. If anyone gets this working let us know in the comments.

NoRedirect is an interesting add-on for users who are using the Firefox web browser and are experiencing DNS error redirects or smart error pages that they do not want to see.

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The ISPs in question, those that are better avoided like the plague from now on are: BT, Virgin Media, Orange, Tiscali, Sky and Carphone Warehouse. I really do not care as much for the reason why they signed the agreement as to that they did sign it at all. The Register thinks that they agreed to the “voluntary” code to avoid or even mute further legislation of the matter which might have forced them to invest in monitoring and storage equipment.

There is no word on punishment yet but it is interesting that the ISPs, Ofcom and the music industry have a few month to agree on a punishment. And I thought it would be the law that would determine the punishment, boy was I wrong.

The Music Industry is favoring the three strikes and you are out punishment which means that if your name, sorry IP, turns up three times you will be kicked out of your contract with the broadband company. No word yet on how they are going to manage false positives and identify offenders in first place and if the user has the right to appeal against the offending letter.

One of the Internet Service Providers (TalkTalk) published a FAQ already on their website that is answering some of the most pressing questions that their customers might have.

It will be interesting to watch how this unfolds.

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