April 2006
You are currently browsing the articles from WhoisIreland Review written in the month of April 2006.
EUrid announced that there would be another landrush based on the domains that have had their applications rejected or expired during the Sunrise 1 and 2 phases. But the reality is that unless the bogus registrar problem that EUrid allowed for the landrush is solved, the same mess of these cybersquatters and speculators snapping up all the good names again exists.
It will be interesting to see if these people in EUrid have learned from the mistakes of the .eu landrush fiasco.
Tags: IrishBlogs,.EU, EU Corruption, Domains, .eu Fiasco, Internet Statistics , Eurid, domainnames
, .EU fraud
Written by John McCormac on April 28th, 2006 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Domains And Statistics and News Bytes.
EUrid announced that it would have another sunrise for domains that were rejected during the Sunrise periods. The new landrush will take place on June 7th at 11:00 Hrs CET.
This is an excerpt from their press release:
The list of all the domain names that will be released on this date will be published on EURid website 2 weeks in advance, on May 24. By making the list of released names public beforehand EURid gives any interested parties a fair chance to register them.
It has been suggested that by publishing a list we are helping the cyber squatters. We believe that these people are well aware of the releases anyway by studying the WHOIS database. By publishing a list, EURid wants to give everybody, including those parties who applied for names during Sunrise, a chance to see when the names will become available again. It also allows EURid to be transparent in what is happening with the Sunrise domain names.
So EUrid becomes the friend of the European hosting industry and the potential EU domain registrant? It is hard to believe this is the same EUrid that colluded with the bogus registrars to allow them to plunder at least 43% of the .eu domains registered in the first landrush period. Strangely EUrid does not seem to be willing to publish a list of these squatted domains.
Tags: IrishBlogs,.EU, EU Corruption, Domains, .eu Fiasco, Internet Statistics , Eurid, domainnames
, .EU fraud
Written by John McCormac on April 28th, 2006 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Domains And Statistics and News Bytes.
The true number of bogus .eu registrars is not known but indications are that it is over 700. The mathematics of the disaster that EUrid facilitated are simple.
700 Bogus Registrars
Each registrar has to prepay 10000 Euros.
A new .eu registration costs each registrar 10 Euros.
With the minimum prepayment, each registrar can register 1000 domains.
700 bogus registrars * 1000 domains = 700,000 .eu domains.
So if each bogus registrar managed to register 1000 domains in the landrush, then the number of squatted or speculative .eu domains could be upwards of 700,000. That’s quite a significant percentage of the number of registered .eu domains.
700 * 1000 = 700000.
That’s the potential size of EUrid’s problem if each bogus registrar managed to use their prepayment.
Tags: IrishBlogs,.EU, EU Corruption, Domains, .eu Fiasco, Internet Statistics , Eurid, domainnames
, .EU fraud
Written by John McCormac on April 23rd, 2006 with 2 comments.
Read more articles on Domains And Statistics and News Bytes.
According to a report on the European Affairs Channel website, the Commission has asked EUrid to investigate fraudulent registrations registrations where necessary revoke the domain registrations. The written response from a Commission spokesman is posted.
Apparently the Commission is aware of the problem and has brought it to the attention of EUrid. EUrid is currently assessing whether there are grounds for legal action. If EUrid finds irregularities then the Commission response said that:
“Measures would depend on the nature of the irregularities. Article 20 of Regulation 874/2004 establishes that, should the investigations confirm that the holder of the domain names have breached the terms of registration, the Registry can revoke those domain names at its own initiative. This decision however, shall be taken by the Registry in the light of the .eu legal framework.”
So it is all down to the people in EUrid finding out if there was abusive and speculative domain registrations by bogus registrars who gamed the simpleton designed system.
So do we expect a whitewash where EUrid will absolve itself of blame or a mass termination of bogus registrars and their clearly speculative and abusive domain registrations? This will be a test of the people in EUrid’s honour and integrity. Will they have the guts to admit that they screwed up and resolve the problem? The evidence is there in EUrid’s system and records.
Nothing less than the credibility of .eu is at stake.
Tags: IrishBlogs,.EU, EU Corruption, Domains, .eu Fiasco, Internet Statistics , Eurid, domainnames
, .EU fraud
Written by John McCormac on April 23rd, 2006 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Domains And Statistics and News Bytes.
The fiasco that has become the .eu story took another nosedive when it emerged that EUrid launched without a facility to enable domain owners to transfer domains. People who had purchased .eu domains and had sold them on could not transfer ownership. Apparently the people in EUrid never expected .eu domains to be resold. If that really is the case, these EUrid people are too stupid to be in the domain business!
Domain owner transfer is a critical part of any modern registry system. But given EUrid’s disctinctly provincial flavour (it is the spawn of the Belgian, Swedish and Italian ccTLD registries), such an omission is not surprising. The idea of domains being traded and sold is quite anathema to the management of many ccTLDs in Europe.
The internet, it is said, routes around damage. The classic method for circumventing such antiquated regulations is to leave the registrant data but change the nameserver and contact data. So while as far as the registry is concerned, there has been no real change, the domain has long been traded on and the bills get paid.
But to launch a landrush without a proper working domain registrant transfer facility points to a staggering in the level of stupidity and incompetence in the management of EUrid. No amount of press releases to gullible “technology journalists” is going to make up for the damage these fools have caused the credibility of .eu gTLD. Apparently EUrid is working on the problem.
Tags: IrishBlogs,.EU, EU Corruption, Domains, .eu Fiasco, Internet Statistics , Eurid, domainnames
, .EU fraud
Written by John McCormac on April 23rd, 2006 with 2 comments.
Read more articles on Domains And Statistics and News Bytes.
According to its own sample registrar agreement, EUrid was supposed to post the links to the domain registration sections of the registrar’s website.
Did EUrid change the rules to facilitate these bogus registrars?
In the sample EUrid registrar agreement, section 15.6 states that:
“The Registrar has the obligation to communicate to EUrid the exact reference of the part of its website where referral is made to the Domain Name Registration. EUrid has the right to record this reference on its own website so that End Users can contact the Registrar directly. EUrid also has the right to update this reference if it proves to be outdated.“
Interestingly, Bob Parsons mentions that registrars could “opt out” of having their registration url listed on the EUrid website.
Most of the bogus registrars do not have valid websites. EUrid is not operating .eu gTLD in a transparent manner. This points to EUrid colluding with these bogus registrars and betraying the interests of the citizens of the European Union.
Tags: IrishBlogs,.EU, EU Corruption, Domains, .eu Fiasco, Internet Statistics , Eurid, domainnames
, .EU fraud
Written by John McCormac on April 12th, 2006 with 2 comments.
Read more articles on Domains And Statistics.
Irish politicians and political parties may have lost their .eu domains to squatters. While the Irish government has previous experience with cybersquatters, some politicians and political parties may have had problems with .eu squatting.
Political parties Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Sinn Fein may have lost their .eu domains to squatters. High profile Irish politicians are also in the same mess. While Bertie Ahern’s domain bertieahern.eu was registered by the government, some of the other high profile mininsters were not so lucky. PD Minister for Justice Michael McDowell and Mary Harney both seem to have had their domains registered by someone else. Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte seems to have some curious registration data on patrabbitte.eu - the organisation listed is the Irish Daily Star and the address given is that of Dail Eireann.
The London Times details other squatting problems that have dogged the bungled launch of .eu by the incompetent EUrid registry. Interestingly dublin.eu is also squatted.
Irish HosterStats Reports
Tags: IrishBlogs,.EU,EU Corruption, Domains, Internet Statistics , Eurid,domainnames
Written by John McCormac on April 12th, 2006 with 1 comment.
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Informationweek.com quotes EUrid’s Patrick Linden as claiming that the .eu landrush was fair and that EUrid will not take any action against potential fraudsters. More importantly Linden acknowledged that loopholes in the registrar approval process may have been exploited.
“It’s definitely possible, but then anyone is allowed to have subsidiaries. If they have ten, they have a better chance,” he admitted. “But it’s not our concern. Our job was to make registering fair, and we did that.”
It was far from fair. Linden even seems to misunderstand the meaning of the word fair. EUrid seems to be circling the wagons in attempt to avoid the fall out from their incompetent operation. The feeling among European hosters is that these fools should never have been given the contract to run .eu in the first place. They have made such a mess of the landrush that the only realistic solution is to suspend and delete all bogus registrars and their registrations.
Linden also tries to spin the story by claiming that the bogus registrars were merely “subsidiaries”. Linden also claims that EUrid will not take action against bogus registrars, prefering instead to pocket the 10K Euros that each had paid EUrid:
Nor, said Lindén, will EURid take 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.”
So there you have it. EUrid is complicit in the great .eu landrush fraud. These people should lose the contract immediately. If they do not, it is just another example of EU corruption for which the EU and the Commission have become famous.
Irish HosterStats Reports
Tags: IrishBlogs,.EU,EU Corruption, Domains, Internet Statistics , Eurid,domainnames
Written by John McCormac on April 12th, 2006 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Domains And Statistics.
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