Expired Norton stops Internet access

Two machines have been brought into us recently with DNS errors on accessing Internet pages. In both cases these machines had an out of date version of Norton Antivirus / Internet Security installed. In both cases once Norton was removed Internet access was restored.
The problem is that you cannot always uninstall Norton after it has expired. This means that you have to use the Norton Removal Tool (or for the brave you can edit the Windows registry directly) but without Internet access you cannot download the Norton Removal Tool.
You can of course download the NRT to another machine, copy the files onto a memory stick or CD and then copy it to the target machine and run it. Remember to reinstall some AntiVirus software once you have deleted Norton. We recommend Panda Internet Security products.
To occupy the high moral ground I have to say that for a company such as Symantec with a product such as Norton AV to exhibit this behaviour simply because the license has expired is really unacceptable.