Re: [ga] (fwd) Re: [cctld-discuss] Verisign Agreements

[Andy Gardner <andy@navigator.co.nz>]

At 7:48 am +1200 3/29/01, DPF wrote:
>GA members may be interested to peruse the link below.
>
>DPF
>
>>
>>Please see the ICANN comment forum at
>>http://forum.icann.org/cgi-bin/rpgmessage.cgi?nsi2001;3AC1CE1E000002E4
>>
>>for Queen's Counsel's opinion on the proposed
>>revisions to the Verisign agreements.

Quoting:

"VeriSign purchased GreatDomains and put a first tranche of what is
believed to be a quarter of a million names on the GreatDomains site for
sale"

Yes. And considering NSI allowed people to puchase those names on a
pay-later basis, and were never paid later, that amount to a bad debt on
NSI's books of either 8.75 million dollars, or 17.5 million is they were
two year registrations. Has NSI/Verisign showed this in their public
accounts?

"The result is that VeriSign appears to be doing what many would describe
as warehousing on a huge scale."

And they're not the only ones. In an effort to retain names under the same
"we were never paid for them" ploy, Register.com/Afternic is doing exactly
the same.

Afternic is selling off 8000 (?) names via their "discount bin"

http://members.afternic.com/discountbin?showcase

Most of these names are practically worthless, but that's not the point.

Let's pick one:

whois 10108.com  (abbreviated)

   Organization:
      register.com
      Unpaid Name Department
      575 Eighth Avenue
      New York, NY 10018
      US
      Phone: 212-594-9100
      Fax..: 212-594-9876
      Email: admin@register.com

Hmmm. Clearly the registrar has decided they are allowed to own these names.

      Created on..............: Wed, Mar 22, 2000
      Expires on..............: Thu, Mar 22, 2001

Whoops! What have we here? The name expired 6 days ago, but hasn't been put
on-hold! Shame!

Afternic/Registrar.com will sell you this expired domain for $12, plus
Afternic's DNEscrow ("the only safe way to buy and sell domains") fee - a
whopping $50. Needing to pay escrow on a name "owned" by a registrar
doesn't make me very comfortable about their business ethics.

So you have to pay $62 for a one year registration of a name that you
SHOULD be able to buy via ANY Registrar at their standard rate.

Here's Register.com's excuse, as provided at Afternic:

"DiscountBin Advisory

>From time to time, a registrant registers a name after it provides adequate
assurance of payment, per ICANN rules, and then reverses and cancels the
payment after the domain name is registered. This practice is unfair to
consumers since these often attractive names are no longer publicly
available. It puts the registrar in a difficult financial position since it
has been forced to pay a non-refundable fee to the registry, despite the
fact that it has not received payment from the registrant. The Afternic
website is making available to the public some of these delinquent domain
names.
Register.com has been the victim of this practice with respect to a portion
of its names. As with all register.com registrations, and in accordance
with the ICANN Registrar Accreditation Agreement, register.com's practice
is to register a domain name only after it has charged a credit card (in
the case of an individual registrant) or has received an equivalent form of
assurance of payment from corporate or reseller accounts. In some
instances, individual registrants have executed what is commonly known as a
credit card "chargeback," which requires a credit card company to refuse
payment to register.com, leaving register.com to absorb the registration
cost, including the registry fee and all accounting administrative costs.
In an effort to make these names available to the public once again while
attempting to recoup such registration costs, register.com has decided to
make these names available through the Afternic.com service. Since many of
the names are pending expiration, buyers of these names should be ready to
submit payment via credit card within 24hours. Afternic's lowest standard
DNescrow fee applies to each name sold and includes one year of
registration with register.com in addition to any remaining term of
registration.
Afternic is pleased to offer this service to ensure that consumers are not
needlessly prevented from registering valuable names, and that cyber
squatters are not compensated for gambling with registrations without
having to pay a fee."

Hey Register.com, you "attempt to recoup" your registration costs by going
after the people that (supposedly) did the chargeback, NOT by warehousing
names past their expiry date.







-- 
Andrew P. Gardner
barcelona.com stolen, stmoritz.com stays. What's uniform about the UDRP?
We could ask ICANN to send WIPO a clue, but do they have any to spare?
Get active: http://www.domain-owners.org http://www.tldlobby.com
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