Bob Parsons, CEO of Godaddy, has posted again about the .EU sunrise fiasco with an analysis of the “phantom registrars”
It seems that my suspicions about Delaware LLCs were well founded..
So, the question now is will someone do anything about this?
Is it acceptable that london.eu and dublin.eu are ceded to opportunistic cybersquatters?
Will the EU take action or will our politicians ignore the farce?
As John points out, this is unlikely.
Marc van Wesemael, the head of Eurid gave an interesting interview a few months ago. Some quotes:
Notre modèle économique est calculé sur la base d’un million de noms de domaine.
So that’s been dealt with already…
Eurid est une association à but non lucratif.
Really? So the 3 or 4 hundred extra registrars you signed up recently didn’t help your finances?
400 x 10000 euro = a LOT of money
And what are they doing with the money?
Nous devons encore financer de lourds investissements, en serveurs notamment.
Maybe that got overlooked before Friday?
And what about cybersquatting?
Avez-vous déjà remarqué des cas de cyberquatting ?
Tout dépend ce que vous appelez cybersquatting. Si quelqu’un a déposé une marque imitant celle d’une enseigne connue, mais avec une différence orthographique, et que cette demande a été acceptée par les instances compétentes, nous ne pouvons nous opposer à l’enregistrement de son nom de domaine
.
The man should go into politics!
Although Parsons is probably right about 99% of “phantom” registrars, I’d imagine at least some of them were domain portfolio managers like myself, acting on behalf of clients; in which case name requests /would/ have been taken on behalf of their registrants, if not specifically then as part of a general protect-our-brands brief.
I don’t speak French btw, and I’m too lazy to Babelfish, so apart from the few bits I was able to decipher via Leaving Cert French, most of that was wasted on me. 🙂
Adam,
This was organised on a massive scale. We are not talking of a handful of domains but rather 60% or more of registered .eu domains. Many of these bogus registrars were owned by squatter operations. The simpleton system was gamed despite warnings. The people in EUrid, the Commission and their advisors betrayed the European Union. Of the 1500 or so .eu registrars, over 700 were bogus.
Unless steps are taken to resolve the situation, EUrid deserves to be stripped of the .eu contract for this mess and the people responsible in the Commission deserve a lot worse. It does not matter what weasel words EUrid comes up with, these people are complicit in the fiasco.
Adam – Legitimate domain portfolio management companies got accredited months ago and have no reason to hide their details from the public.
Like I said lads, 99%. I’m simply saying that Parsons’ conclusions are overreaching. But it is Parsons I suppose.
Everyone reading this will of course be filing a complaint about this face with their MEPs, right? Perhaps we could sing from the same songsheet?
http://www.europarl.ie/meps/
adam
Michele,
I’m Belgian (and French speaking) and I really don’t agree with what’s happening about .eu domains.
I’ve put a website up, http://www.erid.eu, with a wiki that everyone is welcome to improve.
I think we (Europeans) have to take urgent actions, and this website could centralize informations.
Maybe it’s not too late, the more voices we have …
So feel free to improve the pages on it, make suggestions, …
Thank you in advance.
Jean-Francois
errid (or errorid.eu) would have been more appropriate. 🙂
Letter to my MEPs:
http://verbo.se/mep-letter-regarding-eu-landrush/
Adam – Which MEPs are you sending that to?
Jean-Francois – Fantastic resource. The list of registrars ordered by address is very informative
Thank you.
With this list, I’m sure they knew what was happening.
adam: could I add your letter to the wiki (with a link to the original document, of course) ?
It went to my three MEPs Michele: Coveney, Crowley and Sinnott. Jean-Froicois, please feel free.
OK, thank you, adam. It’s available at: http://www.erid.eu/pmwiki/Main/MEPLetter
THE PRE-PAY AND WAIT FOR A YEAR BUSINESS MODEL
I have no opinion about the “phantom registrars” but I am very disturbed by the fact that I am still not able to use the .eu domain I applied for under the sunrise rules on march 17! As a matter of fact, eurid has not yet started processing my documents and, when asked, they claim it might take another 6 months before the process is ready. This is not acceptble for any business and I need to look for another top domain for the particular site. But there is no way I can withdraw (the still unprocessed) application and get a refund!
“Pre-pay and wait for about a year” seems like a very dubious business model with advantages for nobody but eurid!
Per – you aren’t alone. Even if the domain is rejected you won’t get a proper explanation:
http://www.isquattedyour.eu/2006/05/09/dont-ask-eurid-why-your-eu-domain-wasnt-registered/