Sunday, April 9. 2006The .EU landrush fiasco. A bumbling registry allows Europe's very own domain name to be highjacked!Europes .EU domain is being hijacked! What happens when you match an inept registry with crafty businessmen? The answer is a really large scam. This is what is taking place with the landrush introduction of the new .EU top level domain name. This breaking story is a fascinating study of both grand manipulation and lax administration on the part of the EURid registry. The landrush was supposed to make the process fair. Its important to remember that the purpose of the landrush introduction period of a registry, is to provide a fair way to give everyone an equal chance at getting the really good names that are available early on. To do this, most registries take great pains to set up a level playing field, so that all registrars have an equal chance of getting these good names for their customers. The requirements to be a .EU registrar were just too easy. To be a registrar for the .EU registry, companies had to: 1. Attest that they were an individual business entity and were only applying for one registrar accreditation. 2. Attest that they were offering registrations to their customers on an equal basis. 3. Make a deposit of 10,000 euros (about US $12,000). That was about all it took to be a .EU registrar. There was no verification that .EU registrars were really registrars, or were ICANN accredited. In fact, the EURid registry made no attempt to verify that those who applied to be .EU registrars were really businesses at all. On paper to a simple-minded person it seemed fair. The landrush process, which began April 7, is a very straightforward matter. Here's how it works: All the accredited registrars line up and each registrar gets to make one request for a .EU domain name. If the name is available, the registrar gets the name for its customer. If the name is not available, the registrar gets nothing. Either way, after making the request, the registrar goes to the back of the line and won't get to make another request, until all the registrars in the line in front of it make their requests. This continues until all requests have been made and the landrush process is over. For example, assume there are four registrars A, B, C and D. A requests a name then goes to the back of the line, then B requests a name, then goes to the back of the line. When B goes to the back of the line, it looks like this C-D-A-B. B will get to make its next request after C, D and A make their requests. But something was very wrong. The landrush process on the surface seems very fair. But there was something wrong with the process very wrong. There was a flaw in the process. It was too easy to create a registrar. A few sly companies, the most notorious being a company Ill call company X which is believed to be backed by North American mega-millionaires saw a loophole in the process. These companies, instead of only registering their real active registrars, created hundreds of new "phantom" registrars. 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. Some legitimate registrars are claiming that the number of bogus registrars could even be much greater than this. These new phantom registrars were created to hijack the .EU landrush. These new last minute" registrars were engineered to show up just as the windows closed; many had the same phone number, many had no website, and just about all of them seem to have been created to game the .EU landrush process. Its important to note that none of these last minute registrars could have had time to take any landrush name applications. So the evidence is heavy that they were created for one purpose only - to game the system. How Company X and others hijacked the system. During the landrush process, legitimate registrars like GoDaddy.com and others get one request for a .EU name every time the selection process passes through the list of registrars. Company X and others might get to make one hundred or more requests they get to make a request for every phantom registrar they were able to get accredited by the EURid registry. This increases considerably the likelihood that these companies will get the names that they are after. Legitimate registrars get one request. They might get one hundred or more. Let's go back to my earlier example where I showed how the landrush process worked. Now let's factor in the the phantom registrars that Company "X" and others have injected into the process. My guess is, if there are 1,100 registrars, that about 600 of them are phantoms, created solely to game the system. Not all of these are created by Company "X," a number of companies and groups are participating in this ploy. If I represent groups of legitimate registrars by the letters A through E, and those gaming the system by "X" the landrush process would look like this: "X, X, X, X, X, X, A, B, C, D, E." So you see, most of the names in the .EU landrush are falling into the hands of those gaming the systems. Company X will make a fortune at the expense of the Europeans. For the landrush orders that Company X did take, the game works as follow. The .EU names cost them $12.50 each. If the customer is the only one requesting the name, the customer will pay 50 - 75 euros. If more than one customer requests the name, then it is auctioned off by Company X to the highest bidder. 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, specifically for the landrush process. So you see, Company X and other companies who have successfully gamed the system should make a fortune on the .EU landrush all at the expense of the Europeans. Heres how the process should have worked. Now compare this to the deal GoDaddy.com provides its customers. Our orders are taken at $14.75 and are on a "first come, first served" basis. So the first customer who requests a name gets it. No auctions, no scams. Registrars can also work the landrush for their own account. Theres also the possibility that Company X and other companies participating in this gaming of the .EU landrush will be snapping up good names for their own account to be auctioned off later. After all, weve all been in the business for years. Its not difficult to know what names will prove to be valuable certainly more than the initial $12.50 registration cost. The big losers are the Europeans. The irony of this fiasco is that the primary victims will be the Europeans. Because of the way the EURid registry allowed the landrush process to be gamed, the Europeans will have to pay ultra high premium prices for many of the names they should have had fair access to during the landrush period. This assumes that theyll be able to get those names to begin with. We saw this whole thing coming. Early on, we saw this whole scam coming. We tried to warn the EURid registry that their landrush process was problematic and that there was a large potential for abuse. These warnings fell on deaf ears. There have since been complaints filed by dozens of other legitimate registrars about this process. These complaints have been so numerous that the EURid registry has stopped responding to them. They seem to have simply hunkered down for the storm. Its still not too late to fix the problem. Its still early enough in the process for the EURid registry to step up and correct the landrush process. Heres what I suggest that they do: 1. Complete the landrush process. 2. Temporarily freeze all registrations until they can examine all registrars to be sure that they are genuine, and actually are in the business of securing domain registrations. 3. Decredit all registrars that were accredited but did not actually take .EU landrush applications, and were not previously active domain name registrars. This will eliminate hundreds of registrars. 4. Cancel all .EU domain names registered by decredited registrars. 5. Unfreeze the names registered during the original landrush process by the remaining accredited registrars. 6. Conduct a second landrush process for the remaining accredited registrars, allowing everyone access to the cancelled registrations. I dont see the EURid stepping up to fix the problem on its own. The problem with the above fix is that it would take huevos to step up and implement. This is something that weve seen little of from the people at the EURid registry. So we can be sure unless some authority in the European community steps up and forces them to do it, they will do nothing. If you want to write to the EURid registry to express your feelings about the landrush process, you can do so at the following link: http://registrar.eurid.eu/en/shared/about/contactUs.html Comments Display comments as (Linear | Threaded) Page 1 of 5 The most disappointing stuff is that many weeks before this article from Bob Parsons, many european registrars have published press releases and articles announcing a big cybersquatting campaign on april 7
Many articles have pointed out the strange behavior of companies like http://bollywoodbabes.info/ for exemple where the official eu registration page is in fact a list of sponsored links without any way to registrar eu domains Eurid was informed soon enough to react before april 7 but did'nt react at all. Accepting so much fake registrars was a way for eurid to make profitable business : 1600 registrars times 10000 euros is a 16 000 000 euros profit without pain Hi Bob
Thought you might like to have this information - it comes from a reliable austrian hosting outfit. support@webagentur.at Kindest Margaret See the translation for you below: The first names unsuccessfully applied for during Sunrise will be released on June 7. Names released will include all expired domain names and those for which the last application in the queue for that name was rejected 45 days prior to May 24. Only names which are subject to ADR proceedings will not be released. After valuable input from registrars and the Internet community, EURid has decided to publish the release dates for domain names in the Sunrise WHOIS database instead of in a list, as previously stated. By not publishing the names to be released in a list format, EURid wants to make it more difficult for possible cyber squatters and domain name pirates to harvest a large number of domain names. From the 24th of May onwards, it will be possible to see, in the Sunrise WHOIS, if the domain name will be up for release on June Parties interested in a domain name can easily look it up in the Sunrise WHOIS before trying to register it on June 7. Subsequent releases of Sunrise domain names will take place on a weekly basis on Tuesdays at 11:00 (Belgian time) starting June 13. These weekly releases will continue until all names, applied for during Sunrise but not awarded to any applicants, have been released. The WHOIS entry for a domain name will reflect which Tuesday it will be released. All names for which the last application in the queue has been rejected, and for which the ADR period plus twelve days has passed, will be eligible to be released. Since releases occur weekly, one can say that a name will be released some time between 52 and 59 days after the last application in the Sunrise queue for that name has been rejected. #25.1 bob parsons on Apr 12 2006, 16:52 Reply
Dear Bob! very interesting, but this is not the whole story! you know the scam began in sunrise! the sunrise was supposed to make the process fair and protect trademark owners. it did, but unfortunatly the inept EURid created a new kind of cybersquatters/domain name grabbers, too. Everybody whois in the domain biz knew this - some of the slashers are the owners of the most valuable names now! They just changed fronts. It's not really important at all if the landrush was abused, because almost all generic names off value have been registered before. In landrush the cybersquatters were just harvesting the rest. Don't want to think about landrush II in June now! EURid made it pretty easy to get ANY name you wanted - there was just the need to register a trademark for something stupid in advance. They did not really check or cared a second if the trademark made sense or just had been registered a few hours before to get the domain! remember they charged high fees for "checking". There were thousands of generic names registered in sunrise -the brand phase!- from "business" and "marketing" to "dogs" and "cats". Here are some examples out of 10.000+(!) how the cybersquatters made it and EURid protected them: shopping.eu was registered by a cybersquatter using a trademark "shopping" for oven gloves! Musicals.eu was registered using a trademark musicals for dung/fertilizer! But there was even no need to make it such difficult. It was enough to have a 24h- trademark like "market&ing" to get marketing.eu. Even the Vatican (the home of the pope!) and Switzerland are owned by grabbers now. check the .eu whois and you will determin that the top 500 names are owned by aprox. TEN cybersquatters, only! - not kidding! We complained at the EU but they do not seem to understand, what this means! .eu will be a dead top level for a very long time! Besides Bob, did you complain about that? If not, why? I got stupid answers from your office concerning the sunrise abuse! best regards Carsten Well, at least you tried to help out Bob. It seems that someone probably is on the take at the .EURid, especially if shady American Moguls are involved. It's sad your company got a disadvantage for being honest, but since when has anyone been able to trust American business ethics? It'd be nice to redo the land rush, but from a cost benefit analysis, it probably makes better sense to take their lumps and learn from the experience to not repeat the mistake again. How much would you authorize your company to spend to correct the mishap?
"Takes one, to know one"
I am not un-sympathetic to Bob's views about the .eu landrush failure. However, the focus is primarily based on a merchants view (cybersquatter). Yes, all 2-letter and most three letter .eu domains were taken by cybersquatters. As were just about all dictionary words. BUT IS THAT REALLY A PROBLEM? I am not sure it is a big problem. If companies wanted the names, they had the chance. Now, if they wish to acquire them they can probably do so via the mafia. Its not different to real estate. AS chairman of godaddy Bob failed by trying to be fair. Since when did you get to become chairman by being fair and crying fowl play. I waisted money with godaddy and will never do so again. bottom line, USA company looks after eu domains and money does the talking so influence from Europe will acheive nothing,they dont care where the money it comes from just as long as they get it quick.
I can not agree more with M. Parsons, who if I remeber well is the founder and CEO of GoDaddy. My own name, "thauvin" was stolen by a non european citizen who suposedly should not have been allowed to get it (or at list, I should have had a higher priority as I am a european native and resident.
The funny part is here : his registrar is GoDaddy Who said some registrars did not behave properly? of cource the eu registrar isint going to recall all those domains. it would say we admit we did something wrong and that would ake a bunch of problems and especially mad greeks. bot good
Hold on there, Super Bob.
I'm an American, I live (legally) in Europe and have a business here. A VAT registered, tax paying, people employing business with a real business address. The EURID Sunrise and Landrush requirements are exceedingly clear. Any applicant must be ani) undertaking having its registered office, central administration or principal place of business within the Community, or (ii) organisation established within the Community without prejudice to the application of national law, or (iii) natural person resident within the Community. Go Daddy is one of the most popular, and successful, American Registrars amongst the non-euro Domainers. All you one has to do is go on any of the Domainer forums to see them already trading their .EU names in a feeding frenzy. I wonder, Bob, how many of your registrants are legitimately entitled to receive these names you have registered for them? Hmmmm? Did you do anything to assure yourself that they were? I just went on the GoDaddy site and ordered an .EU domain using completely and ridiculously false information and was able to get a my name of choice. Maybe, as long as you are thrashing and trashing EURID to do the right thing (which they clearly have done), perhaps they should also investigate each and every domain registered by you and the other Registrars to make sure that the recipients are indeed based here, and not just through some shadow proxies for the non-European applicants. And then when they find out that applicants are not legitimate, throw those names back into the pot for those for which they were truly intended, namely the Europeans...NOT the parasitic non-Euro Domainers who think you walk on water. I got my names during the Trademark Sunrise, and I had to submit hard proof of who I was, where I was, my VAT Reg. Nº (Euro Tax I.D.) and my trademark. Your chest beating and whinge is much of a muchness (British for "nothing of a nothingness" and for someone living in a glass house, you sure are throwing some pretty big stones around. Really, dude, get a grip. All the best, Steve As far as I know EURid is a registry not a trademark office, nor a registry for corporations, as far as I have understood it is a domain name registry. That would mean that EURid cannot decide who is allowed to have a company or not nor who is allowed a certain trademark or not, which would mean the problem lies elsewhere. Additionally, as far as I know, EURid did demand proof of a company's existence, in cases where there was a doubt. So, I am not sure, what Mr Parsons means the registry should have done? Gone beyond the rules set up by the European Commission and the European Council?
Surely there must be someone else to blame for a system that has obviously failed? I must thank Mr Parsons however, for opening up a dialogue on the issue, no matter if it is in a PR purpose or not, I do believe it is an important debate to hold. However, be careful of the blaming and shaming, as GoDaddy is not the one to throw the first stone, especially not in the .eu debate... IF someone is monitoring this thread, you may want to post this elsewhere, as the information is very, very important for people who feel they were cheated by gamers in the .EU landrush!!!
I had to speak with the EURID folks on another matter, and we got on the subject of Bob's Blog and people using false information to get .EU names during the landrush period (The Trademark and Industry Sunrise was MUCH more stringent than just typing in an address in a web-based form). HERE's WHAT THEY HAD TO SAY........ EURID has reserved the right to deny, and set aside, the registration of a domain name, after the fact and without ADR claim, if the person or entity obtaining that name can not prove one of the three legal requirements for an .EU domain, namely: natural citizen of any one of the EU countries; bona-fide business presence in Europe; or, non-EU based but with a bona-fide business subsidiary in EU. Unfortunately, they do not have the resources to verify 1.5 million applicants. However, if someone brings a complaint to EURID over a disputed name, and can show that the registrant does not fulfill the requirements of residency, then EURID can take the name away. It is, therefore, incumbent upon anyone who feels that they have cause for a legitimate complaint to contact EURID. Just thought some of you might want to know this. Good luck, and all the best I flagged up this problem at the ICANN meeting back in 2004 (see the last 3 lines of my article and the main article itself here: http://www.icann.org/meetings/capetown/icann-domainnames-workshop-doc1-0 1dec04.htm ).
I also received this assurance from Eurid in July 2005: "The accredited register must forward to EURid only those applications he received after accreditation, and he must do so on a first-come-first-served basis. Auctioning with the domain name is definitely not allowed. Not complying with the regulation and as well as the agreement is a breach of contract. On a similar note, we don't allow reselling. The end consumer should at at any time know who is responsible for what and who would be the accredited registrar. This should be made clear at all times and should be explicitely mentioned in the agreement with the end consumer." If any of these shell registrars were set up for Pool and accredited at the last moment, it is worth noting that the majority of applications would have been received before accreditation (because Pool was inviting applications months ago). I also note that "auctioning is not allowed" and I note that Pool is using an "auction" model. What is Eurid's position on this? Finally, I don't see how the end consumer can know in advance which "shell registrar" will be their "registrar" if they apply through a 'parent' registrar. Therefore, Eurid's statement that the end consumer should know who the registrar is seems problematical. Yours, Richard Henderson Dear Bob,
I have to congratulate you with your excellent intervention concerning the .eu landrush! Not that I share your criticism. Quite the opposite, I think, Bob, that you are missing a couple of important issues. You have clearly not taken the trouble to read the regulatory texts (EU Regulation 733/2002 and EU Regulation 874/2004, both available on EURid's website) concerning .eu and you also seem to be unaware that a registry in a dominant market position (not to mention the M-word that registries hate so much) is not doing the things as a registrar confronted with potentially hundreds of competitors. For starters, EURid is bound by a very strict non-discrimination principle. If company A can prove it is a company and it is willing to accept the contractual conditions offered by EURid then the latter cannot simply refuse it as a potential registrar. It is not allowed to treat potential registrar A any different than potential registrar B or potential registrar C. The sentence " There was no verification that .EU registrars were really registrars, or were ICANN accredited." actually made me laugh. Is that what you understand under competition, Bob, to allow only a limited number of existing registrars? New companies wanting to enter the market are going to like this very much. Unfortunately for you (but fortunately for the people who want a .eu domain) EURid cannot limit acces to .eu registrations for existing registrars. It would be undemocratic, discriminatory, non-transparant and probably a huge infringement of the existing .eu legal texts. Nevertheless, I wanted to congratulate you. It's amazing how you have managed to seize the hype concerning the launch for .eu and turn it into benefit for your own personality and company. It is a brilliant and simple plan. You figured that the launch of .eu would generate a lot of media coverage. You took advantage of this to launch an agressive and negative article on your blog mentioning the event under media coverage. Then you invite potentially intellectually disabled individuals to copy your thesis and suggested solutions and forward it to the registry or to any other souce that would be able to put it in the spotlight. And the winner is...Bob Parsons and his company. Suddenly the name of Bob and his company are appearing everywhere, creating visibility for his company that would have costed millions on advertising money. This was a very clever move, Bob, and I congratulate you for it. Leaves me with the thought that if it would be true that US based persons and people would have hijacked the .eu name space,it will be their data that are appearing in the whois as owners of the domains or incorrect "phantom" (to use you favorite wording) data. In both cases EURid could delete the domains concerned. Firstly, because you need a connection with EU territory in order to be a .eu domain holder and secondly, because you are contractually obliged to give in correct contact data. Sincerely,... I am one of those beaten by cyber squaters. I have a local website currently at mycambs.com which is for local people. Due to the difficulties in search engine optimisation I wanted the word cambridgeshir in the domain and was glad to apply (and thought i had) cambridgeshire.eu. It showed that a company in the us also had a petiton for this name, what worse case is there, how can they argue that they have more right to this domain. I was born in cambridgeshire and live there. And now operate www.mycambs.com a website about cambridgeshire for cambrigeshire people.
This is wrong and I will try to fight this on whois.eu I listen to the show and know how you hate cyber squatters. like you say this was designed to comabt exactly what eventually happened in this case. grrrr calvin Hi Bob,
There are some comments you might want to review and possibly post a review at http://buytaert.net/drupal-eu-hijacked. Thanks, Walt Captai n, USMC (Veteran) You forgot that Company X was not really good at catching .EU domains, they seem to have got most crap domains. The best registrars were, of course, European.
I' am Italian...
I applied for some generic eu-domains for landrush. None passed. Now I find those domains for sale on SEDO. They all cost exactly 5000 Euros, and if I ask to justify the high price, I get the same standard answers. There seems to be a bot selling them on SEDO... I agree with the solution Bob proposed (but not with his US-centric arrogance). Dear Markus,
Of course I have US-centric arrogrance. Tough for me to have Italian-centric arrogrance. I'm located here in the U.S. Just teasing. I kid the Italians. I love Italy and everything about it. Rome is one of my favorite places outside of the USA. I like Rome almost as much as Las Vegas. In fact I think of Rome whenever I'm walking through the Bellagio. Appreciate your post, Bob My post was not about someones arrogance (that was only a post-note), but about the fact, that someone registered lots of domains an now is auctioning them through a robot!
As it seems someone programmed a money-making machine: - register generic words - advertise them on sedo.de with a starting price of 5000 Euro - answer to queries with standard sentences like " I am also negotiating with other sedo users" (when in fact i was the only bidder) or "I have previously received higher offers" Can anyone else confirm the same experience? Well I got my own back in a funny kinda way with UnitedStatesofAmerica.eu and AmericanEmbassy.eu but thats little consolation. If anyone wants to buy them for a serious price then do a whois and send me a mail. No fan mail" please. NoThanks By the way I would refer everyone to the European Commission rules & regulations (the Law in Europe) under which European Commission appointed Eurid. Those Laws lay down strict guidelines that Eurid appear to have broken ,including that they will ensure Registrars are competing on equal terms. If you do a search on "Commission Regulation (EC) No 874 / 2004 " you will see a .pdf file detailing all the rules. Perhaps someone like Bob's lawyer might look at those laws and see which ones have been broken. What people have to realise that these are not just Eurid rules that are being brokern but European Regulations. THAT is the way to beat this, but it takes the money that only Bob has !!.Bob you going to put your money were your mouth is ??. Get a European Lawyer to look it it ,you must have the money and you'll go down in history as hero of the domain industry !! Fred Hey Id appreciate if someone would make Eurid aware of my website at http://www.eurid-are-incompetent.com so they get the message !!. Their email addy is info@eurid.eu By the way found another company of Raymond King and Jay Wetherdal's is Name Battery, Ltd. Registrar also of theirs I presume is Chinesedomains, LLC chinesedomain.cn registered kraut.eu and many others. Fred Everyone who did not manage to register their .eu domains because of the high-demand, is screaming murder.
It was like this during sunrise and it is like this now, during landrush. Any of you heard of MediaTeka.net they are a registrar with several registered domain names however they do not even have a website!!!!
Dear Mr. Bob Parson, You have the power and others. You can solve this complexity on .eu names registration. And then get more power ahead on GOOGLE okay! Hi Bob,
Thanks for your post and the time you spent to describe the "scam" from a registrar point of view. I have just published an article on eudomains.org about your very interesting post. I really hope the unfair distribution of the .eu domain names during the landrush and before (all those &&&& trademarks) could be cancelled. I am dreaming of a fair re-distribution for european citizens... it is the only way the .eu would be a success, I don't think people are going to buy names for top dollars... These are just a minute amount of the domains; tonyblair.eu fluvaccine.eu dirtbike.eu mapofeurope. eu europerail .eu windowsupdates.eu domainnameauctions.eu domainnameauction.e u botoxinjections.eu All the limited companies who are the alleged registrants of these names are Raymond King and Jay Westerdal controlled. One of the companie, eu team ltd appears not even to exist. Eurid are a bunch of useless idiots and do not care about anything but how much money comes in. Alan Dear Bob,
I have to congratulate you with your excellent intervention concerning the .eu landrush! Not that I share your criticism. Quite the opposite, I think, Bob, that you are missing a couple of important issues. You have clearly not taken the trouble to read the regulatory texts (EU Regulation 733/2002 and EU Regulation 874/2004, both available on EURid's website) concerning .eu and you also seem to be unaware that a registry in a dominant market position (not to mention the M-word that registries hate so much) is not doing the things as a registrar confronted with potentially hundreds of competitors. For starters, EURid is bound by a very strict non-discrimination principle. If company A can prove it is a company and it is willing to accept the contractual conditions offered by EURid then the latter cannot simply refuse it as a potential registrar. It is not allowed to treat potential registrar A any different than potential registrar B or potential registrar C. The sentence " There was no verification that .EU registrars were really registrars, or were ICANN accredited." actually made me laugh. Is that what you understand under competition, Bob, to allow only a limited number of existing registrars? New companies wanting to enter the market are going to like this very much. Unfortunately for you (but fortunately for the people who want a .eu domain) EURid cannot limit acces to .eu registrations for existing registrars. It would be undemocratic, discriminatory, non-transparant and probably a huge infringement of the existing .eu legal texts. Nevertheless, I wanted to congratulate you. It's amazing how you have managed to seize the hype concerning the launch for .eu and turn it into benefit for your own personality and company. It is a brilliant and simple plan. You figured that the launch of .eu would generate a lot of media coverage. You took advantage of this to launch an agressive and negative article on your blog mentioning the event under media coverage. Then you invite potentially intellectually disabled individuals to copy your thesis and suggested solutions and forward it to the registry or to any other souce that would be able to put it in the spotlight. And the winner is...Bob Parsons and his company. Suddenly the name of Bob and his company are appearing everywhere, creating visibility for his company that would have costed millions on advertising money. This was a very clever move, Bob, and I congratulate you for it. Leaves me with the thought that if it would be true that US based persons and people would have hijacked the .eu name space,it will be their data that are appearing in the whois as owners of the domains or incorrect "phantom" (to use you favorite wording) data. In both cases EURid could delete the domains concerned. Firstly, because you need a connection with EU territory in order to be a .eu domain holder and secondly, because you are contractually obliged to give in correct contact data. Sincerely, Dear Peter,
Whilst I truly and fully accept your arguments of 'ICAAN accredited' being non-sense for .eu registration, and that small companies have every right to participate and start their business with .eu, Bob Parsons this time raises a very valid general point, which you have completely ignored. I personally saw several domains registered by non-existent companies, domains that I was looking for. One such domain was registered by "ColumbiaNames.com LLC", clearly a fraudulent company having nothing to do with Europe, and with non-existent web-site. Another domain was a four-letter domain name, and it was registered by a .nl company on behalf of a .nl individual (or so they claim), although the very same four-letter domain is still free in .nl, and in every other european union domain registry. EURid MUST address the key issue raised here: why half the registers do not accept any domain name registration applications or do not even have a web-site. Cheers, C. A. M. Dear Peter,
do you work for EURid? Are you somehow associated with them? Your Thread sounds as the (in)official excuse of a poor EURid bounded by restrictions of the bad EU Commision. Yes, there are regulations - but EURid had the Chance to talk with the Commision and solve the severe problems in advance. If I work for someone and obtain that something goes wrong, very wrong, I talk to my boss and give him the chance to correct it. In this case EURid was not competent enough to see what will happen or they just went -grossly negligent- on. Besides, .EU did not had a big media coverage in most European countries- not in Germany, not in the U.K., not in France. Might have been different in Belgium, but sorry, Belgium? Could have been different in Cyprus, too - they now do have more .EU Domains than France. Any idea why? Think about that! Grabbers are not stupid and will not register names with an address in the US! The late hype for .EU in the U.K. might be explained like this, too! I do not care why Bob does this. Let godaddy profit a little bit of the publicity! Bob is just telling facts. EURid is just looking for excuses (press release april 4th: "EURid cannot comment on the effectiveness of the trademark laws...", "A large majority did not want to accept such a limitation..." - with whom did they talk? Grabbers?) .EU needs a fair chance - EURid did and does not show, that they are willing and able to do that! Carsten Dear Bobby,
I propose you should get Bush and convince your senate that the .eu is in the hands of the terrorists. Attack EU and take over the business. It's the best thing you do as US. Isn't it? Please stop saying how bad it was. It's for europeans, so why you bother? Are you a european? Everybody knew, what was going on, so it was a choice one made to use the rules in full or not. And let's try to be honest. All the most valued names where already gone in the sunrise. And everybody thought, that they will be ready to takeover. Yeah, right. You stil seem to forget - this is not Iraq, not Vietnam and cenrtainly there are no indians here! Brilliant post. Thanks for exposing the reason behind why all of my legitimate domain applications failed. I think someone should start an online petition to show eurid how many people are actually disastified with the landrush shambles.
Bob, your suggested solution is a no-go for fairness.
How do you secure the "first come, first serve" principle when there are hundreds of registrars and there is a landrush? And what IS "first come, first serve", anyway? Your response is unimpressively vague. Securing "first come, first serve" is, obviously, impossible during a landrush, which you must have when you open up a new TLD for registration. A more fair solution might have been to arrange for a lottery among the first applicants. That solves the "fairness" among applicants, except that applicants of course can stack the deck with lots of cover companies even more easily than could registrars. As for registrar requirements, a fair qualification might be that you'd already been a registrar for a European ccTLD for over a year. Dear Bob!
very interesting, but this is not the whole story! you know the scam began in sunrise! the sunrise was supposed to make the process fair and protect trademark owners. it did, but unfortunatly the inept EURid created a new kind of cybersquatters/domain name grabbers, too. Everybody whois in the domain biz knew this - some of the slashers are the owners of the most valuable names now! They just changed fronts. It's not really important at all if the landrush was abused, because almost all generic names off value have been registered before. In landrush the cybersquatters were just harvesting the rest. Don't want to think about landrush II in June now! EURid made it pretty easy to get ANY name you wanted - there was just the need to register a trademark for something stupid in advance. They did not really check or cared a second if the trademark made sense or just had been registered a few hours before to get the domain! remember they charged high fees for "checking". There were thousands of generic names registered in sunrise -the brand phase!- from "business" and "marketing" to "dogs" and "cats". Here are some examples out of 10.000+(!) how the cybersquatters made it and EURid protected them: shopping.eu was registered by a cybersquatter using a trademark "shopping" for oven gloves! Musicals.eu was registered using a trademark musicals for dung/fertilizer! But there was even no need to make it such difficult. It was enough to have a 24h- trademark like "market&ing" to get marketing.eu. Even the Vatican (the home of the pope!) and Switzerland are owned by grabbers now. check the .eu whois and you will determin that the top 500 names are owned by aprox. TEN cybersquatters, only! - not kidding! We complained at the EU but they do not seem to understand, what this means! .eu will be a dead top level for a very long time! Besides Bob, did you complain about that? If not, why? I got stupid answers from your office concerning the sunrise abuse! best regards Carsten Page 1 of 5 Add Comment
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Excerpt: Some people have gotten all bent out of shape over the .eu 'land rush' process, claiming that the system was gamed or that they were somehow disadvantaged (hah! I'd love to see what it is exactly that constitutes when a...
Tracked: Apr 16, 12:32
Excerpt: Lots of links: I've kept lots of webpages open this week, but don't have sufficient original content of my own to prompt a top-level entry... if you're looking for interesting reading this weekend, then try some of the articles in the extended entry here.......
Tracked: Apr 14, 03:27
Excerpt: Kõlakad käivad, et .EU domeeninimede müük langes kurikaelte kätte ning ausate ostjate asemel langes rasvasem noos sahkerdajate kätte. (via memorandum.com )
Tracked: Apr 12, 12:53
Excerpt: Bob Parsons, CEO of GoDaddy.com, is blasting "the .eu landrush fiasco".
Tracked: Apr 11, 08:50
Excerpt: As you may already know, the new .eu domain name is now on sale. The registrations are being performed in two stages. The first is a “landrush'’ stage where companies can register their trademarks, while the second is the open free-for-al...
Tracked: Apr 11, 04:52
Excerpt: ...
Tracked: Apr 11, 04:23
Excerpt: Ο Bob Parsons, CEO του GoDaddy σε ένα αναλυτικό άρθρο για την αίσχος κατάσταση στην καταχώρηση των .eu domain names (όσοι δοκίμασαν κάποιες καταχωρήσεις μά...
Tracked: Apr 11, 01:39
Excerpt: Starting April 7 .eu domain names became available for anyone who lives in European Union (pretty much every country of europe except Russia, Ukraine and other Eastern European countries. ...
Tracked: Apr 10, 11:15
Excerpt: Uma viso muito crtica daquilo que os europeus se esforam por, com a conivncia dos media, dizer que um sucesso. Bob Parsons, CEO e fundador da GoDaddy (um registar popular em todo o mundo), aponta os defeitos do processo. Com muita razo (j toparam quem so os registars portugueses do .eu...?)
Tracked: Apr 10, 06:48
Excerpt: Bob Parsons has an interesting post on his blog concerning the recently opened registration of the .eu domain. On the one hand, I can understand how trying to manage a registry with over 450 million potential applicants could be troublesome, however th...
Tracked: Apr 10, 05:18
Excerpt: Un post da leggere sui problemi legati al dominio .EU. Link: Hot Points – A blog by Go Daddy founder and president Bob Parsons The .EU landrush fiasco. A bumbling registry allows Europe's very own domain name to be highjacked!
Tracked: Apr 10, 01:40
Excerpt: Bob Parsons, the founder of GoDaddy wrote an interesting post about the new .eu domain name registration scandal. Basically the EU domain registry made it way too easy to become an official domain name registrar. For as little as $12,000 pretty much an...
Tracked: Apr 10, 09:47
Excerpt: Somehow, I knew something incredibly messed up was going to happen with the opening of .EU domain names. Landrush times are always nuts but c’mon. This is rediculous. Pretty much, any of us could have become .EU registrars as long as we met the 3...
Tracked: Apr 09, 06:38