It is easy to be wary of EURid claims. Its roll out of the .eu gTLD has been problematic to say the least and it had denied that there was any problem with cyberwarehousing. When EURid claims that over 27202 .eu domains (01 August figure) are Irish registered then there is reason to question that figure.
A survey of the .eu gTLD by WhoisIreland.com, only 3379 of the identified .eu domains were hosted on the DNS of Irish hosters. Realistically this would put it between the Irish .net and .org ownership figures.
Perhaps there are some Irish companies that are being used as fronts for non-EU warehousing operations. Maybe IEinternet’s EUinternet.com registrar operation has been wildly successful and has put other Irish .eu registrars such as Eircom.net, Esat.net and Irishdomains.net in the shade. The total number of prior rights applications for Ireland is 3829. Extrapolating the number of .eu domains detected on Irish hosters would give a rough figure of 5000. Perhaps the true Irish owned .eu count will never known but a figure in excess of 27K does seem high.
Tags: Irishblogs,.EU, Domains, .eu Fiasco, Internet Statistics, Eurid, Cyberwarehousing, domainnames
Written by John McCormac on August 10th, 2006 with 7 comments.
Read more articles on Domains And Statistics.
The Sunrise validation procedure has drawn fire over its erratic and often downright flakey decisions. Indeed given some decisions, it would be a risk to trust PwC BE to validate the recipe to boil water.
Malls Limited one of the UK companies apparently owned by Worldwide Media Inc’s Michael Berkens failed to get malls.eu with a Belgian National Trademark. It also seemingly failed to get mall.eu.
The director and secretary of Malls Limited are, according to the UK Companies House documentation, Michael Berkens and Judith Berkens. Both have the same address:
PO Box 129, Highlands, North Carolina 28741, USA.
The registrant WHOIS data for Malls.com is:
Worldwide Media, Inc.
PO Box 129, Highlands, NC 28741, US
Each is listed as having 18 UK company appointments. The company names for which Michael Berkens is listed as a director are all premium keyword domains.
Girls Limited 05482934
Cartoons Limited 05483925
Voyeurs Limited 05483965
Textmessaging Limited 05483990 (.eu accepted/registered)
Downloads Limited 05483992
Lesbian Limited 05483999
Webcams Limited 05484002
Malls Limited 05484017
Hardcore Limited 05484019
Gays Limited 05484064
MP3S Limited 05485107 (application rejected)
Adultdating Limited 05485457
Weightloss Limited 05485895
Jokes Limited 05485995
Datingservice Limited 05486002
Gaydating Limited 05486005
Skiing Limited 05487949
Boats Limited 05488056
Of these, textmessaging.eu is the only one that appears to have been accepted and registered.
Both Michael Berkens and Worldwide Media Inc are noted players in the US domain monetisation and warehousing business. According to a recent article in a Miami newspaper, Berkens has approximately 50000 domains under his control.
The domain monetisation business relies on type-in traffic and domains not being renewed. Domains are not renewed and are snapped up when they drop. They are then pointed to pages with PPC advertising so that anyone pointing looking for the old site will be presented with a page of adverts instead.
The malls.eu domain was uncontested and its seems that Malls Limited was the only company trying to get it. There are other companies trying to get the mall.eu domain. According to the article in the Miami Herald, Berkens’ asking price for the malls.com domain is $5M. But the question that arises from this rather poor .eu hit rate is this:
How did some companies with obviously dubious and highly questionable trademarks (such as Bar & Celona and Frank & Furt) get their domains past PcW BE’s validation process?
Tags: .EU, Domains, .eu Fiasco, Internet Statistics, Eurid, Cyberwarehousing, domainnames
Written by John McCormac on August 10th, 2006 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Domains And Statistics.
The UK company Ovidio Limited is not the Ovidio Limited of the Ovidio/Fausto/Gabino syndicate. And it is not the UK company Malls Limited either. There is a Cyprus company with the name Ovidio Limited registered with the address given in the .eu whois data.
The same address, (3 Pikioni Street, 3075 Limassol, Cyprus) is also home to Fausto Limited and Gabino Limited.
The domains registered by Ovidio Limited that have been detected so far seem to be a general landgrab of generic keyword type domains. Many of them have equivalent .com websites. The domains registered by Gabino Limited that have been detected seem to be of a gambling and casino nature. The domains detected on the Fausto Limited nameservers seem to be porn domains.
The data obtained on the UK Ovidio Limited was mixed up with Malls Limited. But neither are the Cypriot company. So who is behind the Ovidio Limited in Cyprus?
Tags: IrishBlogs,.EU, Ovidio Limited, Ovidio, Domains, .eu Fiasco, Internet Statistics, Eurid, Cyberwarehousing, domainnames
Written by John McCormac on August 10th, 2006 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Domains And Statistics.