> Visitors to a popular web site get directed to a "this domain doesn't exist" > web page and you're claiming that if that weren't the case, the idiots at > mp3.com would have realized their site was down? Right.
It is unknown what would have happened if sitefinder wasn't in place when the domain expired. It is known that MP3.com didn't notice the domain was being redirected to sitefinder. It took a user with a clue about sitefinder to realize what had happened. The majority of their users have probably never heard of sitefinder and may have equated the sitefinder page with the all too familiar file not found error page when following dead links. Many sites use the most basic monitoring, i.e. pinging the server. Some add an additional level of monitoring by attempting to connect to specific ports (i.e. 80). It is unknown what type of monitoring MP3.com employs. However if they were only using one or both of these basic techniques, they would not have noticed the problem.
