The .EU Landrush Fiasco 259
googleking writes "Bob Parsons, CEO and Founder of GoDaddy.com, has blogged about the .EU landrush fiasco. During the landrush phase for names which opened last Friday, established 'big name' registrars got exactly equal chances of registering names as did anyone who chose to bill themselves as a registrar. Bob asserts that hundreds of these new 'registrars' are actually fake fronts for a big name US company." From the article: "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 ... The landrush process on the surface seems very fair. But there was something wrong with the process -- very wrong."
"DNS servers too busy" (Score:3, Interesting)
slashdot.eu (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Umm... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd have set it up so that people had to apply to be able to register, so that they'd be able to weed out the illegit registrars, then I'd make everyone submit their lists, in order of preference, and work my way down.
Making it spammable is just begging for trouble.
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
Who really cares about getting EU addresses anyway? I guess asking that makes me sound like an isolated bumpkin American, but honestly the same goes for .us and pretty much any other TLD that isn't .com. Do companies really stand to make megamillions selling non-.com addresses? I just don't see it.
Halfway through the initial registration, the .eu domain became the third largest, behind .com and .uk. They have probably passed .uk by now. It is not shaping up to be one of those ignored TLDs. So, yes a lot of people care about it and yes big money is involved.
Re:Who said business is fair? (Score:5, Interesting)
The point he's trying to make is that there were several unimplemented methods that would've prevented these bogus registrars from gaming the system, and in fact people running the EURid land rush were notified in advance by several 'legitimate' registrars about the loopholes in the system, and refused to do anything about it (in fact going so far as to completely ignore them).
Enron also 'gamed' the system, and look how much damage that caused. It's fair to say that this could also have some dire financial consequences against those who were meant to benefit from this process.
I think his suggestions at the end of TFA have merit, and it would be nice to see something done about this scam... I have a hunch, though, that those in the EURid who allowed the system to be 'gamed' have a financial stake in the gaming process... otherwise these loopholes would've been closed long before the land rush began.
Re:slashdot.eu (Score:3, Interesting)
wow! (Score:2, Interesting)
This, of course, should surprise no one.
Auction (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Who cares? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd argue that... (Score:5, Interesting)
The clutter isn't helped by lazy, inefficient admins and registrars who don't maintain records correctly, but that's another issue altogether.
I can't help but think it would save everyone a lot of grief if all TLD admins, registrars, cybersquatters and ICANN members were just rounded up and sent to Siberia for a couple of decades.
List of registrars shows the phantoms (Score:3, Interesting)
Since this is a pretty obvious process, I guess it amounts to every registrar choosing how many chances in the landrush it wants to pay for... So what? Vetting individual registrars anyway would have been an messy procedure, the EU registry makes some money from the bogus registrations, and nobody knows if anyone will ever pay any sizable amount for a .eu domain.
So who are the "Company Xs"? (Score:5, Interesting)
I found one of them. Dotster [dotster.com] is the one behind a whole [eurid.eu] bunch [eurid.eu] of [eurid.eu] Vancouver-based [eurid.eu] registrars [eurid.eu].
Has anyone else had any luck tracking down the other companies behind this?
Re:What about them? (Score:3, Interesting)
No you don't. If my name is Steven does that mean I get to reserve steven.com? What if I immigrated to the EU or had my citizenship changed, do I get to reserve steven.eu or steven.cn or steven.hk as well?
Heck I should charge people for using the name 'Steven' because its "legally" mine! /sarcasm
You have two and ONLY two "fair" choices... Pure random lottery, or first-come-first-serve.
Or you could let people and companies petition beforehand to reserve certain web addresses. Microsoft Corp.? Fine, they get microsoft.eu. Joe McDonald, age 19 lives with his parents wants mcdonalds.eu? Uh, no. Apple Corp. and Paul McCartney in contest over apple.eu? We'll place that on hold until the courts can make a decision. Joe Somebody wants imasuperl33td00d.eu? Fine, whatever.
If I own something that you want and I don't want to give it to you, that does not count as extortion.
Except you're seeing PRIVATE INDIVIDUALLY charging MILLIONS of dollars for web names. Face it, the majority of these .eu web address purchase rushes are for the purpose of extortion. Apple.eu, Microsoft.eu and Dell.eu would all fetch a couple million easy. They're all multi-BILLION dollar companies, a few million is not that hard to squeeze out of them.
It does not bother me in the least if someone other than IBM owns ibm.eu.
And if you're the CEO of IBM and people start complaining about a picture of a kitten on fire posted on ibm.eu who do you think they're going to bitch to first? As a private citizen, you're not even worth a memo compared to these multibillion dollar companies. No one visits johnjackson.com but THOUSANDS of people visit ibm.com DAILY.
if someone wants to pay $10 a year waiting for hell to freeze over before I offer to take it off their hands, well, their money to waste.
Reports of people selling web addresses that were nothing more than family names for tens of thousands was common in the '90s. Where have you been for the past ten years?
Okay - So who gets Apple.eu? Paul McCartney or Steve Jobs?
Let the courts figure that out. They're what they're for.
Re:What about them? (Score:3, Interesting)
I didn't claim that gave me the "right" to reserve my name - Quite the opposite, a point with which you apparently agree... No, I don't automatically get "steven.com". Neither does "SteveCorp" or "Three Steves, Inc", or even "Steve Jobs".
Joe McDonald, age 19 lives with his parents wants mcdonalds.eu? Uh, no.
With an "s" at the end, I would tend to agree that if we accept the idea of "rights" to a name, he wouldn't get "mcdonalds.eu". What about "mcdonald.eu"?
Joe Somebody wants imasuperl33td00d.eu? Fine, whatever.
And if Walmart, however unlikely this may seem, decides to change its name to "imasuperl33td00d-mart"?
I don't think you get my point - Arguing that companies get first dibs counts as not only arbitrary, but a sharply anti-human sentiment.
I proposed nothing more radical than putting we mere living breathing evolved inhabitants of this planet back on par with FICTIONAL entities, and it truly, truly saddens me that people would defend fiction over their own species.
Okay - So who gets Apple.eu? Paul McCartney or Steve Jobs? Let the courts figure that out. They're what they're for.
Okay, you still miss the point - BOTH companies chose a name that already exists as a common English word for a fruit, and not-coincidentally occurs near the beginning of the alphabet. The fruit existed first. People with the surname existed second. The companies came LAST. Why does the company (whichever wins in court) get preference on the domain name? And if you answer "the law says so", consider me dissapointed.
I would agree with you if - and only if - companies had to pick names that do not exist as words in any "natural" language. Xerox would satisfy that (though I personally would still say they can enter the drawing for that domain name with everyone else); Anything presumptuous enough to call itself "Apple" or "Jones" or "McDonalds" can go pound sand.
Apple.eu, Microsoft.eu and Dell.eu would all fetch a couple million easy.
If those companies value those domain names that highly, I fail to see the problem with them, if luck doesn't shine on them in the name drawing, having to pay whatever they will and whatever the "winner" wants. We call it "capitalism", not "extortion" (though I realize this involves the EU, so take that as you will).
As a private citizen, you're not even worth a memo compared to these multibillion dollar companies.
So you do understand my point - Yet you still argue in their favor? Why?
They would't piss on your grave to save your life, but you want to do them a favor by making sure no one can confuse the corporate equivalent of "Bill Jones" with "Bill Cones" or "Jill Jones"?
Hey, I don't think highly of our species either, but I won't betray the whole race in favor of fiction that, under OPTIMAL conditions would see us all work for nothing (aka "slavery") just to survive and buy (with what money?) their products.
Where have you been for the past ten years?
Learning how much Corporate America (tm) cares about their employees (Enron), consumers (RIAA), and the incidental victims (Firestone, ne Bridgestone) of their actions. Under which rock have YOU hidden that you still trust Bill Gates to act in your best interest?
As an aside, which you may or may not consider relevant - I consider domain squatters right up there with spammers and virus authors as the scum of the Earth. But to call any system that favors fictional entities over humans; that favors the "biggest" user of a name; that favors the deepest pockets, "fair"? That doesn't solve the problem, it just describes one symptom of the societal psychosis that allows the problem to exist in the first place.
I visited one. It's a HOUSE!!! (Score:2, Interesting)
It's just north of Factoria Mall [factoriamall.com], and definitely a suburban environment with houses on all sides. It's a gray two-story house, the only one on a downward-sloped street (SE 22nd Pl). Pretty good acreage. A Chevy Blazer in need of washing was parked in the driveway. I would've gotten some photos, but my cell phone battery died while cruising Crossroads Mall on Saturday (poor Verizon reception on an Audiovox CDM-8900), sorry.
As for who it is... Name Intelligence [eurid.eu] has some history [archive.org] and the whois info matches.
If the ones in Bellevue/98008 weren't all PO Box 7449, I'd visit them on Thursday. As it is, eNombre [eurid.eu] seems awfully similar in name to eNom [eurid.eu], which [eurid.eu] itself [eurid.eu] has [eurid.eu] five [eurid.eu] siblings [eurid.eu].
An obvious tip for those using the Advanced Search: it gives the registrars in chronological order, so you can look in your status bar at the numbers to see which were applied for together.