| .eu domain operator suspends 74,000 names |
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| by Stuart Corner | |
| Wednesday, 26 July 2006 | |
  
"In this case we are convinced that the domain name holders of the 74 000 .eu names (Ovidio Ltd, Fausto Ltd and Gabino Ltd) are acting as a front for a number of registrars. The domain name holders and the registrars can be regarded as one and the same" said Herman Sobrie, legal manager of EURid. The growing practice of warehousing was flagged back in April by Internet monitoring service Ipwalk, which reported that a total of 1.6 million .eu domain names had been registered, but a disproportionate amount (75,000) by Cyprus. It population is only 800,000 yet it had registered more domain names than France, population 60 million. Ipwalk reported this weeek that, following EURid's decision on suspension, the number of .eu registrations in Cyprus plummeted from 85,000 to 12,300. EURid's action appears to be a case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. Blogger Bog Parsons, CEO of US.-based domain registrar GoDaddy.com commented back in April that the .eu domain processes was being hijacked thanks to "an inept registry" and "crafty businessmen". He claimed that the process was too easy to abuse by the creation of phantom registrars. "The requirements to be a .eu registrar were just too easy. To be a registrar for the .eu registry, companies had to: attest that they were an individual business entity and were only applying for one registrar accreditation; attest that they were offering registrations to their customers on an equal basis; make a deposit of 10,000 euros $US12,000)...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." It now appears that Parsons' comments were spot on, but they were refuted at the time. EURid spokesman, Patrick Linden was reported saying "We verified that each registrar was an individual legal entity," but acknowledging that some many have played the system. He also said EURid would not be taking action against companies which may have set up scores of subsidiary registrars. "We don't plan to do anything as long as there has not been a breach of the contract each signed with us." Having now acted, EURid would later like to make the names available for registration again, but that must await a court decision. It is to be hoped that UK based Telnic learns from EURid's experience. Earlier this year, after six years of trying, it gained approval from ICANN for the .tel top level domain which it intends to operate as a one-stop shop where individual and organisations can provide a range of contact information and control how they wish to be contacted. Given that there will be only one .tel domain different and unrelated companies that might have similar domain names, such as acme.com, acme.com.au and acme.co.uk could be scambling to secure the .tel equivalent, or could fall prey to warehousers who register the name and subsequently try to onsell it at a high price. {moscomment} |
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