jmccormac - 11:37 am on Jul 25, 2006 (gmt 0)

The magnitude of EURid’s decision to sue 400 phantom registrars for breach of contract is only just becoming apparent. In order to become a .eu registrar, an up-front fee of 10000 Euros had to be paid. This entitled a registrar to register 1000 .eu domains before topping up. With 400 registrars each paying 10000 Euros each, that’s 4 Million Euros. The phantom registrars could, theoretically have registered 400,000 .eu domains. That’s a significant part of the .eu gTLD. However EURid has put only 74K of Ovidio Limited’s domains on hold. This means that either the Ovidio owners distributed the domains over these registrars or more domains have yet to be dealt with.

In brutal financial terms:
400 phantom registrars * 10000 Euros = 4 Million Euros.

That's about US $5M.

However other phantom registrars still exist and action has not been taken against them yet. But I would guess that they are getting very nervous about now.

Regards...jmcc