[council] Announcement Concerning "Electronic Domain Name Monitoring"

[Louis Touton <touton@icann.org>]

To the Names Council:

The following announcement was posted on ICANN web site today.

Louis Touton

==============

The US Federal Trade Commission <http://www.ftc.gov/> today announced
<http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2001/02/morgenstern.htm> that it has obtained a
court order stopping a domain name registration scheme known as
"Electronic Domain Name Monitoring" or "Corporate Domain Name
Monitoring."

The "EDNM" scheme involved sending unsolicited faxes to domain name
registrants that stated "URGENT NOTICE OF IDENTICAL DOMAIN NAME
APPLICATION BY A THIRD PARTY." The faxes appeared to be official notices
from the "National Domain Name Registry" warning that a third party had
"applied" for a domain name nearly identical to the victim's domain.
Targets of the solicitation were told that they were "required" to
submit an opposition to the third party domain registration or else the
"licensing rights" to the domain name would be assigned to "any
applicant," and CDNM/NDNR would not be "liable" for loss of "domain name
license" or "interruption of business activity."  The FTC characterized
these assertions as "not only false, but also nonsensical."

The FTC obtained an order from the United States District Court,
Northern District of Georgia, stopping the deceptive practices and
blocking access to websites used in the deceptive operation, including
www.ndnregistry.com, www.ndnregistry.net, www.ndnregistry.org,
www.ndnr.org, www.ndnr.net, www.ednm.net, www.ednm.org and
www.cdnmonitoring.com.

The companies named as defendants in the FTC's suit include 1268957
Ontario, Inc., and 1371772 Ontario Inc., doing business as National
Domain Name Registry, Electronic Domain Name Monitoring, and Corporate
Domain Name Monitoring.  None of these companies are ICANN accredited
registrars.