On the .eu landrush fiasco — Bob Parsons
I don’t always agree with GoDaddy President Bob Parsons, but this time he has hit the nail on the head regarding the .eu landrush.
With over 1.4M domains registered, some would look at the launch of the .eu domain name as a success. But GoDaddy President Bob Parsons has uncovered some scary facts regarding the landrush and how individuals/corporations set up sham registrars to snag fresh domain names.
This is not the first time this has happened. I know of at least one individual who created his own registrar during the .info and .biz launches to snag domain names.
If you submit a registration through a firm like Dotster or GoDaddy you are competing against the registrar’s thousands of other clients for a place in line. But if you create your own registrar you’re the first in line every time! In the .eu landrush people set up multiple sham registrars to submit multiple domain names in each round.
As Parson’s points out in his blog, the .eu registry (EURid) made it very easy to become a registrar. Registrars didn’t even have to be ICANN-accredited!
It’s a shame to see this happen. But it’s an even bigger shame that this seems to happen every time a fresh domain is released. The problem isn’t limited to the landrush period. The sunrise period of the .eu launch was also a joke as people set up sham business entities to claim trademark names.
[Now if only Parsons will look closer to home and fix his own firm’s domain transfer tactics.]
