EURid Puts Over 73,000 .eu Domains On Hold

EURid put over 73K .eu domains on hold on 20/July/2006.

[jmccormac]

EURid put over 73K .eu domains on hold on 20/July. The move caused the number of Cyprus registered .eu domains to drop from approximately 85767 on 19/07/2006 to 12188 on 20/July/2006. Most of the affected doamins seem to be registered by cyberwarehousing operation Ovidio Limited. Ovidio Limited has been registering thousands of generic keywords as .eu domains since the landrush in April. It also has a Cyprus address in the WHOIS data for all .eu domains checked. Even Ovidio's own .eu domain (ovidio.eu) is on hold. Perhaps EURid has been shamed into doing something about the bogus registrar problem?

Regards...jmcc

[wmuser]

Cant remember teh URL but .EU registry has previously droped even more fake trademarke regsitered names whcih wee registered during landrush

[1Lit]

This is great news.

[edited by: 1Lit at 11:10 pm (utc) on July 23, 2006]

[edited by: Webwork at 11:25 pm (utc) on July 23, 2006]
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[OptiRex]

Regards...jmcc

Wow! Thanks, I've been out of the loop the last few days, must check up since that company took some "other" domains I would have liked.

[jmccormac]

EURid has now confirmed that it has taken legal action against 400 registrars over a breach of contract involving the cyberwarehousing of 74K domains. The front companies named in the press release are Ovidio Limited, Fausto Limited and Gabino Limited. EURid also wishes to make the domains available for registration again.

EURid press release:
[eurid.eu...]

Regards...jmcc

[hunkydory]

Is there a list of .EU domains that have now been released?

[Pedent]

I'm astonished at this. Never thought they'd do anything about it. Enforcing rules on registering domains? Unheard of!

[jmccormac]

There is no public list of domains yet. The domains are "ON HOLD" which, translating from smurfspeak, means that they are still resolving but their WHOIS is marked as being on hold. The court hearing is apparently scheduled for October and domains may not be available again until the end of the year.

Regards...jmcc

[jmccormac]

Well as regards EURid enforcing rules, I think that having the European Commission order them to deal with the problem might have influenced things.

Regards...jmcc

[moocow]

Great!

About time the same thing happened in the .com/net/org namespace. It's overdue.

[kapow]

At last a Registry acting responsibly about internet pests!

Just before .eu names launched, I posted about how the Domain Pests would buy all and everything, severely hindering ordinary folk from obtaining a useful name. The majority of replies to my post actually supported such activity!

Now I'm much happier :)

[ritch_b]

Not before time either; Bob Parson's recent blog on the .EU issue as a whole was something of an eye opener. Good to finally see some positive action being taken.

R.

[jmccormac]

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

[OptiRex]

But I would guess that they are getting very nervous about now.

And I'm getting excited:-))