RSSEURid Suspends 74,000 .eu Domains
By Ed Oswald | Published July 25, 2006, 2:56 PM
EURid, the registrar who manages the .eu domain, said Monday it had suspended 74,000 domain names due to suspicion of fraud. Three British companies, Ovidio, Fausto, and Gabino are accused of acting as a front for other registrars, some of which are based outside of the European Union.
In order to qualify for a .eu domain, the registrar must be based within the EU. EURid said it had already suspended several domain names because the companies could not prove they were based within the region.
"The domain name holders and the registrars can be regarded as one and the same," EURid legal manager Herman Sobrie said. "Since registrars should only register domain names for existing customers and not 'warehouse' the names in order to resell them at a higher price, this is clearly in breach of the registrar contract."
Pending a court decision, the domain names remain suspended. If EURid is successful in its challenge, the group plans to make the registered names available for registration again.
EURid was criticized in April by GoDaddy.com CEO Bob Parsons, who said "grand manipulation and lax administration" allowed hundreds of fake registrars to grab domain names before legitimate customers could obtain desirable domain names. Parsons blamed one company -- backed by mega-millionaires in the United States, but it is not clear if Monday's action involved that company.
Only one of the companies is officially registered in the UK, Ovidio. According to the British government's listing of UK companies, the organization is said to do market research and opinion polling. All three companies have identical text on their Web pages, with only the company name changed.
Go figure, its not like they didnt know before registration went live....
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Haha, maybe they should confess their sins at VeryLiberating.com
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damn it .... and this had to happen
right after i had registered betanews.eu ....
is not fair ... IS NOT FAIR ....
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Huh...
I still have Das_mod.eu. Apparently while not based in the EU, they do agree with the sentiment. ;)
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ahHAHahHA .....
Thats what i told them about PC_Tool.eu ....
come on, im just holding it for a friend
but sadly not even that worked ....
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Perhaps due to the fact that I shower regularly. ;)
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You know that their have been more rounds of registration. Only the first ones were for institutions and companies. After that everybody was allowed to register .eu domains so cangratulations with your Das_mod.eu domain, it's yours.
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...
I couldn't be happier?
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Well, that 1 day fiasco only took 4 months to act on / clean up.
If you leave the door open to internet scammers, they will steal everything in the house by whatever means they can come up with.
Hope they learned their lesson.
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