RSSGoDaddy: .eu Domain Hijacked
By Nate Mook | Published April 10, 2006, 3:19 PM
In a scathing blog entry posted on Sunday, GoDaddy.com CEO Bob Parsons attacked European registry EURid for "grand manipulation and lax administration" regarding the recent opening of the .eu top-level domain. Parsons said the process turned into a large scam involving hundreds of fake registrars.
The .eu domain opened on Friday for what was called the "landrush" registration phase. During this period, accredited registrars such as GoDaddy could register domains for their customers using a process similar to standing in line. A registrar could request one domain at a time and then would be shuffled to the end of the line until the other registrars had a turn.
Europeans rushed to snatch up domains, registering over a million names in the first 12 hours alone. EURid highlighted the success, touting .eu as a real alternative to .com and the disparate country-level domains used across Europe.
However, while the landrush approach seemed fair on the surface, GoDaddy's Parsons said there was a giant loophole that enabled companies to create hundreds of fake registrars. He claims that one company -- backed by mega-millionaires in the United States -- was able to game the system and essentially have hundreds of positions in line.
"Two weeks before the landrush period began there were 800 — many real, many not — accredited .EU registrars. Then just before the landrush period began, Voila! Hundreds more registrars appeared. According to the EURid website – at least 300 more registrars appeared," explained Parsons.
Parsons says if there were about 1,100 registrars signed up with EURid, about 600 were "phantoms." The reason to take advantage of this loophole involves the auctioning of valuable names.
"Many of these names will be auctioned off for thousands of dollars. And of course, the likelihood that Company “X” will get these names is good because they were responsible for many of the “phantom” registrars created and allowed by the registry," he said. "Companies who have successfully gamed the system should make a fortune on the .EU landrush – all at the expense of the Europeans."
GoDaddy claims it tried to warn EURid of the potential for abuse, but its cries "fell on deaf ears." Parsons added that so many complaints have been filed EURid has simply stopped responding to them. But he has proposed a solution, involving EURid freezing all registrations and making sure they are genuine.
Those that are not from valid registrars should be deleted, Parsons says, and a second landrush period should be held for those domains.
"The problem with the above fix is that it would take huevos to step up and implement. This is something that we’ve seen little of from the people at the EURid registry," he chided. "So we can be sure unless some authority in the European community steps up and forces them to do it, they will do nothing."
Bob didn't mention the biggest "game" of them all - the fact that the Benelux trademark registry intentionally turned a blind eye and granted the most generic trademark applications in history allowing domain speculators with no legitimate claim to acquire the most valuable generic domains such as sex.eu, business.eu, news.eu, etc. Benelux had been developing their "fast track" system where applicants could get a trademark registered in a couple of days with a mimum of scrutiny for years in anticipation of .eu Sunrise. The Benelux registry made millions of dollars from knowingly granting essentially fraudulent trademark registrations and helping these speculators "job the system" and pervert landrush into a tool used to defeat the very principle it was established for - to allow legitmate right holders to prtect their brands from cybersquatter and give everyone else an EQUAL chance to register the .eu domain of their choice on a first-come, first-served basis. We can't put all the blame on the Benelux registry though. Equally guilty, is its co-conspirator, Eurid, who set up the system to allow this abuse and then turned a blind eye and deaf ear when it predictably occured.
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|Sounds like somebody got burned...
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|wat can people do with non-legitmate domain ways? host their own crap and thats about it. I dont see it affecting companies in any way
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|they do it so they can either auction the name off to the company that has the name trademarked (hold it for ransom) or to fool netizens into going to a site that is dedicated for advertising ir offers a similar service...
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|Imagine if you could have somehow grabbed microsoft.eu? Sony.eu? google.eu?
Yep, unavoidable chaos...way too many .com domains registered to ever ensure that every .com company is the legitimate company behind the request for the new .eu name.
Then there's .org, .mil, .info, .net--endless opportunities for fraud.
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|The Landrush was to allow us normal people to register our own domains, but .. the microsofts, googles and the likes could apply for theirs in December last year.
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|"Imagine if you could have somehow grabbed microsoft.eu? Sony.eu? google.eu?" ... this was not possible
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The story as presented here left out some really relevant information up until the current phase only people who could prove a legal right to a name could apply fot a given name. For example I own www.infomatique.org but I could not apply for infomatique.eu unless I could produce my certificate of registration for Infomatique as a business name. My understanding is that if you did manage to register microsoft.eu you would not be permitted to retain it Microsoft disputed you ownership.
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|ha ha .... i registered betanews.eu .....
muahahaha now imma sell it back to BN for an exorbitant ammount of money ......
while keeping the rights to the domain so that i get paid royalties for each visit the website gets .....
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|somebody wake me up when we blow up the planet.
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|yeah, dream on... There is always always the option for betanews to file a dispute or file a trademark or copyright infringement against you (in this case you are going to be the paying part, not betanews)!
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|godaddy has juevos. Gotta give 'em that.
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