EuroDNS vs. Afnic dispute?

[willamowius]

Has anyone heard of the dispute between EuroDNS and Afnic?

EuroDNS is acting as middleman for non-french registrants and it seems those domains are currently unreachable.

[Bamikanarie]

Yes, I do.

I have 2 .FR names registered, they have been down since Saturday. Personally, I think it's hard to believe that EuroDNS did not know of these problems earlier.

Besides that, their service is terrible. I sent them some urgent e-mails on saturday morning, which were answered not before Monday at the end of the morning. After that, I had to mail three times to even find out what was actually happening. It is really frustrating to see that a company like can't afford to give 24/7 support on important things like domain registrations.

[willamowius]

Does the dispute also affect other registrars who offer a trustee service?

I'm thinking of trying <no specifics, please>, but that wouldn't make sense if all registrars were affected.

[edited by: tedster at 10:43 pm (utc) on Oct. 27, 2004]

[referer]

This is what eurodns are saying about the issue:

[shurl.org...]

This is what afnic are saying:

[shurl.org...]

[referer]

Actually, I thought it was ok registering a .fr domain for everyone. When I registered thru eurodns.com they didn't say anything about it. I'm an innocent victim...

[computer]

Bamikanarie, more then 4000 Domains have been switched off by AFNIC. EuroDNS already published news on their website about this problem. A lot of Emails have been already answered on the weekend.

[computer]

This alert linked from the Home Page of EuroDNS!

All ".fr" Domain Name Holders are in Danger!

AFNIC, the French national Registry has taken the unprecedented step of freezing thousands of ‘.fr’ Domain names. This action, taken without warning or explanation, has terminated access to the related websites and e-mail services, causing chaos and disruption to organizations around the world.

The impact of such actions on Internet and E-mails services on which so many businesses rely worldwide could be disastrous if it were to be followed by other Registrars.

Reference:
[eurodns.com...]

[edited by: tedster at 8:15 pm (utc) on Oct. 28, 2004]

[Bamikanarie]

That's one side of the story. From the other side we learn that...

... The aforesaid was warned as early as July 2004 that his practices might be opposed to the philosophy of the naming Charter. The members of the consultative committees hold on September 29 and 30, decided to take all useful steps facing prejudicial behaviours , contrary to the spirit of the naming Charter and to the legal duties of the AFNIC, regarding the law of July 9, 2004, about electronic communications and audiovisual communication services.

(Source: AFNIC site)

Even before this was published I found it very hard to believe that the whole situation caught EuroDNS by surprise. Wasn't it just a strong error of judgement of EuroDNS to ignore the warning bells; and maybe even think that AFNIC would never dare to shut down their thousands of domains?

Please consider the following:
(i) What's the interest of AFNIC to claim that they did warn while they didn't? None: it is a non-profit organisation.
(ii) What's the interest of EuroDNS to ignore signals? They probable made a lot of money on these .FR domains.

[gpmgroup]

I think the problem arises as EuroDNS uses one person for their local contact for .fr domains. There has been a dispute with at least one of these domains and AFNIC has suspended all 4000 .fr domains registed by EuroDNS.

[computer]

AFNIC has striked rules how to handle this situations.
They ignore it absolutley their own rules. Sorry but this are Wild-West-Methodes and not methodes of an Non-Profit-Organisation.

[jmccormac]

That list contains a lot of potential trademark disputes and domains that could be considered as typo squatting. The registrant in the few domains that I checked is EuroDNS and as such the contract is between AFnic and EuroDNS. Regardless of the innocence of any legitimate registrant that has registered a .fr via EuroDNS, there is a clear problem with some domains on the list quoted on the page below.

[afnic.fr...]

It will be interesting to see what happens here. But I do not think that AFnic will back down.

Regards...jmcc

[computer]

I know the list too.
But please tell me, is there a reason on the list why doing this overkill to 4500 Domain Names?
Should I give you a list of Domainholder that do not have a business any more?
Domains are like land, you can work with it. If you are good, you can harvest your field.
But Afnic burned now the field.

[jmccormac]

Yes but AFNIC seems to want the domain "owners" to move their domains to other .fr registrars. The AFNIC move is aimed specifically at EuroDNS. AFNIC apparently warned EuroDNS that it was registering domains against the spirit (phiolosophy) of the naming charter. EuroDNS may have continued registering questionable domains as well as legitimate domains and AFNIC, it appears, was forced to take action to protect the integrity of .fr cctld. Suspending all EuroDNS domains was probably the safest and the only way of doing it. The theory may have been that legitimate domain owners would shift their domains to other .fr registrars and the typo-squatters and trademark infringers would not.

The problem is that the domain owners have to move their domains from EuroDNS and they do not own their domains. AFNIC has washed its hands of the problem by saying that they have no contract with the third party domain owners who have registered their domains through EuroDNS. In law this seems to be true.

Regards...jmcc

[computer]

Here on Heise (german IT Newsportal) is an article about this AFNIC-Desaster.
[heise.de...]
You can read there that EuroDNS got an email during summer about Registrered Trademarks in their account. EuroDNS answered to this email that they will answered and explained that they will follow the mediator procedures. I think there is more behind it. I believe it is a political decision.

[Bamikanarie]

@Computer: actually I don't care at this point whose fault this situation is. You and EuroDNS blame it solely on AFNIC and AFNIC blames it on EuroDNS.
Bottomline is that the domains of a lot of people (including me) are still blocked, and for what it is worth: neither of mine infringe any trademarks.
My first concern is to get those domains up-and-running again. If someone has ideas about how I should proceed to get that done, please sticky me. EuroDNS *so far* didn't undertake any action to help me further.
What disturbs me the most is that they are probably more concerned about the few bucks they will lose when helping me move to another .fr supplier, than the damage this whole situation will have to their reputation. Or do they think they'll get away with it, and never having to meet any of the unlucky website owners in court?

[computer]

Did you contacted them already? They send emails to all .fr customers. I am sure they answered you. I know some domains that run already again. Do you have a registered Business in France and a Siren Number? Or a Registered Trademark on the Domains? Then it should be easy to make them running again. (now it is weekend, thats a bit problematical) For for thuesday it should be possible.

[Antonov]

Where exactly does afnic feel the spirit of the naming charter is violated: the fact a company is acting as a middleman or the fact that a company is registering lots of questionable domain names?

From my dealings with eurodns I have always been under the impression that they were allowed to act as a middleman.

If it's about trademark complaints, isn't it common practice to block only those domains that are disputed?

regards, antonov

[snsh]

Perhaps the french authorities are simply interested in expunging non-french words from the .fr TLD :)