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Register.com Loses Class action Lawsuit
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Sep 10, 2003 06:21 AM
from the and-nelson-laughs dept.
from the and-nelson-laughs dept.
Anonymous Blowhard writes "I found out today I am a member of a class that just beat register.com in New York Supreme Court!! The suit was filed by Michael Zurakov because register.com pointed his newly registered domain(s) to 'coming soon' web pages. Mr. Zurakov receives $12,500 for the harm caused by register.com while members of the class can look forward to a settlement of $5 off their next domain renewals. Register.com will also pay 'reasonable Class Counsel attorneys'
fees and costs in an amount not to exceed $642,500.00, subject to Court approval.' If you want to exclude yourself from the class, giving up any settlement and not being bound by its terms, you have to opt-out."
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Register.com Loses Class action Lawsuit
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I won this class action lawsuit... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.netcom.com/~srenton | Last Journal: Friday December 03 2004, @08:30PM)
$650,000 in court fees, huh? Guess we know who the lawyers were fighting for.
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Thursday May 24 2007, @01:08AM)
Register.com today announced their fees are increasing by $5 for new domain registrations and renewals.
Try again! (Score:4, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Friday September 03 2004, @06:47PM)
ICANN requires that every registrar have a transfer agreement with another registrar in place in case it goes out of business.
GANDI used to have more about this, but it still has a little: GANDI FAQ [gandi.net].
Coming Soon page is common for new domains? (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.turnstyle.com/)
Re:Coming Soon page is common for new domains? (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.rigidsoftware.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday September 24 2005, @11:58PM)
damages? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:damages? (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Thursday May 24 2007, @01:08AM)
Technically, the $12.5K is for his services in representing the class. Otherwise, he likely would only get $5 as well. Still, what a completely frivolous lawsuit. It doesn't say in the article, but did he at least try to negotiate up-front first before wasting over half a million dollars in legal expenses?
phew, finally.... (Score:5, Funny)
Lawyer Spam! (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Wednesday February 02 2005, @11:26PM)
This was a stupid lawsuit. (Score:5, Insightful)
What an idiot!
Now, he's costing them $600,000. Which ain't pocket change. I hope they can handle it. They've done pretty good. Customer service is okay. A little slow, but they answer their phones.
Re:This was a stupid lawsuit. (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Wednesday May 24 2006, @04:25PM)
This is the sort of litigious bull**** that we could do without. If the guy didn't know better than to submit his domain without name servers, or didn't know that these things don't get organized immediately, then he should sue whoever told him how to set up a website. Or better yet, he should just chock it up to learning the new forms of business in the internet age.
And class action my butt. It implies that he was doing this for all those people who were wronged by the defendant. If there were serious damages done, we'd have heard more about it from the enraged masses, and the settlement would have been something real or substantial. This was just a way to "lawyer up."
Re:This was a stupid lawsuit. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.madirish.net/)
Re:This was a stupid lawsuit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This was a stupid lawsuit. (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.rigidsoftware.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday September 24 2005, @11:58PM)
Second, for that "coming soon" page to show up, they MUST have propagated an IP address into the DNS servers. This suggests they could have just as easily propagated YOUR IP address instead of theirs. Which gives them incentive to delay your processing.
Thrid, if they received ANY revenue off the advertising on your domain, aren't you entitled?
Re:This was a stupid lawsuit. (Score:5, Interesting)
"
Maybe you already received this amount in the form of discounted registration prices.
i myself use godaddy, though. http://www.godaddy.com
Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it obvious that I'm not exactly impressed with this? Register initially pointed his domain to a "coming soon" page when he registered his domain, and they should have put that they would do this in their contract, fair enough. Is that worthy of a lawsuit? Hell no. Is that worthy of hundreds of thousands of dollars in "damages"? Hell no.
"NY Supreme Court" can be misleading (Score:5, Informative)
i really don't mean to be anti-us (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a real turn-off, it portrays Americans in a really bad light, I know your corporates are all like this but do you the people need to be to?
Re:i really don't mean to be anti-us (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:i really don't mean to be anti-us (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://easytarget.me.uk/ | Last Journal: Sunday June 27 2004, @04:56PM)
If all they see in society and the media is spin, profit over ethics and threats (I'll sue you). Where the amount of money you have is generally the only relevent measure of somebody's value or 'worth'. Where everything you ever see, hear or read is distorted in some manner by these forces.
How do you expect people to behave differently?
Here in the UK things are nearly as bad. I personally reckon the BBC is probably the only thing that has stopped us decending to the unfortunate state the US has found itself in.
So next time you hear of a little thieving toe-rag (oops, sorry, I meant underprivaleged young man who has fallen to peer-pressure) coming out with the usual excuses ('I brought it off a man in a pub', 'I was threatened by the way the old man ran away from me so I kicked his head in' etc..) blame the spin doctors and barristers.. The criminaly are just learning from the masters.
Our lives are now nothing more than manipulation, external and internal.
Stupid lawsuits by the few... (Score:4, Interesting)
It is a tiny minority of Americans that file stupid lawsuits.
Americans laugh at these idiots too.
Frequently, the media portrays the lawsuits as idiotic, but when you dig into the details and hear the other side it is not so idiotic. Case in point, the famous case of the old women suing McDonald's for the hot coffee spilled on her. Stupid lawsuit until you read the full story behind it. That McDonald's coffee was the hottest in the industry. That McDonald's coffee temperature was on the "knee of the curve" where a few degrees made the difference between a minor burn and a 3rd degree burn. The women received 3rd degree burns and had to go to a hospital. By pushing their coffee temperature to an extreme, well beyond industry practice, McDonald's created a hazard. The lawsuit is not so stupid in that context.
The case sited in this story does sound stupid, but I would like to hear the whole story before I judge.
why to sue? (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://johannes.node.at/)
Won the law suit? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.eadz.co.nz/blog/)
Lawyer gets : $642,500
Locking innovation down... (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.locarecords.com/ | Last Journal: Friday April 13 2007, @12:08PM)
Presumably all the company will do is add a clause to their terms and conditions that allows them to explicitly do this anyway.. But tying up every new attempt to use the technology in clauses and legalese is hardly going to free people to experiment...
Re:And I thought suing for spilt coffee was insane (Score:4, Informative)
The woman sued because the coffee was simply too hot. It was hot enough to instantaneously destory skin, flesh and muscle.
The woman who spilt it was hospitalized for 8 days and suffered 3rd degree burns on 6 percent of her body.
Sunny Dubey
Probably a good idea to exclude yourself.. (Score:3)
Yes! Let's agree to agree on things you never agreed on in the first place! Not that this is NOT worded in quite the same way as their current services agreement words it (which includes a 30 day period in which you can up and leave if they change the services agreement); it would seem that this class action settlement overrides such common sense provisions. Nasty!
The remedy seems worse than the disease.
$5 and waive all rights, or keep the rights? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sue the Lawyers! (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.buffalonews.com)
And the lawyers wonder why we want the vast majority of them boiled in oil?
Oooohhhh Ahhhhhh my domain name pointed to a shitty "coming soon" page for two days!! The humanity!! I want to go bitch slap that guy.
Object to the Attorney's Fees (Score:5, Interesting)
See Sec. VII (C) of the linked document for reference.
RDC actually sends me coupons for more than $5 to entice me to keep using their service. This is pretty much the same thing. So they're effectively paying me nothing, paying the plaintiff $12.5K and paying the lawyers $650K.
I Object!
Re:Object to the Attorney's Fees - Mod Up (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.koancomputers.com/)
C. IF YOU WANT TO OBJECT TO THE SETTLEMENT, BUT STILL BE A PART OF THE SETTLEMENT CLASS.
If you do not request exclusion from the Settlement Class, you may object to any aspect of the proposed Settlement, including the fairness of the settlement, the attorneys' fees and costs or the adequacy of Plaintiff or Class Counsel or Notice, by filing and serving a written objection. Your written objection must state the case name and number ((Zurakov v. Register.com, Case No. 01-600703), the grounds for your objection and your full name and address, and your objection must be filed with the Clerk of the Court, 60 Centre Street, New York, NY, 10007 with a copy to Counsel. SUCH OBJECTIONS MUST BE RECEIVED NO LATER THAN OCTOBER 14, 2003. If you mail an objection to the Settlement, then you bear the risk of any problems with the mails. Such objections will be considered at the Settlement Hearing (see section VIII below), at which you may appear if you wish.
The Cost (Score:5, Informative)
Are we missing something here? (Score:4, Informative)
However, the article is published on register.com's own website, and I get a feeling that we're only getting one side of the story. Nowhere does it explain how he was possibly harmed by this redirecting. A quote on another site seems to point to something else going on -
Michael Zurakov, the lead plaintiff in the suit, which has yet to be certified as a class, claims it took him several months to stop his Web address -- Laborzionist.org -- from redirecting to the "Coming Soon" page.
No more details on why it took that long, but if it was the case that it took several months until he was actually able to use what he'd paid for then it might put a different slant on the story.
Re:Are we missing something here? (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.hasturkun.com/)
The Land of Opportunity (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.5vs1.com)
Opt Out? (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://www.silentbrouhaha.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday July 31 2004, @07:42AM)
I think that would be a violation of your legal rights. So who's going door to door to see if anyone ever used register.com to allow them to opt out in case they wish to bring their own lawsuit?
Law.com article about it: (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=10510282390
Apparently he was unable to change it to direct it to his website for several months after registering it.
I suspect that register.com may have shot themselves in the foot by claiming that the contract did not explicitly give Mr Zurakov
exclusive control over the site. The judge did not agree, saying that if if it wasn't explicit in the contract 'to register' a site should give you more than just a listing in whois.
Register.com should have just admitted that something went wrong with their DNS assignment system and settled out of court. They probably could have gotten away with $5000 or so.
Re:Harm? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the harm is that register.com can use these coming-soon-websites to get advertising revenue by putting adds on 'property' (the domain) they don't own.