News Bytes
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The .eu ccTLD is reaping the whirlwind as thousands of domains are dropped every hour now. The ccTLD, incompetently managed by EURid, was warehoused and squatted to such an extent that businesses and individuals throughout the European Union lost confidence in the extension. According to EURid’s only statistics, over 54% of .eu ccTLD is warehoused and potentially cybersquatted as of 31/December/2006. The .eu ccTLD peaked at approximately 2.6 Million domains registered. At the moment, it stands at 2455787 domains. The question now is about how low it can go.
The danger now is that most of the domains being dropped will be in the 1.2M or so of individual and business registrations. This is the core of the ccTLD, indeed the core of any domain. Without it, the TLD has no credibility. And given the way that EURid collaborated with the non-EU cybersquatters and warehousers, there is very little reason for people to hold on to their .eu domains other than for defensive registration purposes.
The European Commission who awarded the contract to run .eu ccTLD to the bungling EURid venture have only themselves and their “expert” advisors to blame for this mess. The only thing that would redeem the .eu ccTLD is the redelegation of the .eu ccTLD to a competent and well run registry and the obliteration of the warehousing and cybersquatting operations. But the fools in the European Commission are oblivious to the reality of the situation. Until real action is taken the market has decided, quite bluntly, that .eu domains are the junk bonds of the domain industry.
Tags: Irishblogs,Eurid, .eu Statistics, Domains, Webhoster Stats, Internet Statistics, Cyberwarehousing, domainnames
Written by John McCormac on April 28th, 2007 with 1 comment.
Read more articles on Domains And Statistics and News Bytes.
EURid relaunched its website on February 5th and screwed it up. The www.eurid.eu website was previously readable. Now it is just another entry in EURid’s catalogue of failures.
You’d think that a registry would employ proper web designers. But EURid is supporting the Open Source to such an extent that its web developers (who use black text on a dark blue background) didn’t even bother to change the meta data in the Joomla implementation:
In the Meta data the following lines are present:
meta name=“description” content=“Joomla - the dynamic portal engine and content management system”
meta name=“keywords” content=“Joomla, joomla”
meta name=“Generator” content=“Joomla! - Copyright (C) 2005 - 2006 Open Source Matters. All rights reserved.”
With all the millions of Euros they had extracted from Irish and UK companies for failed Sunrise 2 registrations, you’d think that EURid could employ web developers who were competent enough to change the default settings on the CMS used for the registry website.
As for the colour scheme - black text on a dark blue background? What are these guys using for a monitor? I suppose that the management of EURid know even less about web design than they do about legitimate registrars and the domain business. The sooner the European Commission strips EURid of the contract to run .eu ccTLD, the better it will be for the EU.
Tags: Irishblogs,.eu, Domains, Joomla, Web design, Eurid, Cyberwarehousing, domainnames
Written by John McCormac on February 7th, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on Domains And Statistics and News Bytes and Tech Commentary.
The Sunday Times carries an article by Mark Tighe about the .eu Fiasco that contains some interesting comments by Patrik Linden of EURid on why Irish companies are failing to get their .eu based on Sunrise applications. It is enlightening because it shows the utterly formalistic attitude of EURid and PwC BE to the core business registrations that ignores the whole purpose of the sunrise phase. EURid gets to pocket all application fees for rejected sunrise applications - so far it has made around 6 Million Euros from the rejections.
The Sunday Business Posts’ advertising supplement “Computers In Business carries an editorial by Adrian Weckler about .mobi tld. He seems to think that it will end up as a bit of an irrelevance. While some points are valid, the .mobi TLD is actually a far better managed TLD than .eu ccTLD.
Written by John McCormac on October 1st, 2006 with no comments.
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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 no comments.
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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 no comments.
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.
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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 no comments.
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.
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