Domains: April 2006 Archives

By allowing .eu domains to be registered without any nameservers is Eurid breaking the rules?

Remember that domain you wanted to get under sunrise 1 or 2 that Eurid rejected? Well it seems those domains are going to be released in a new "landrush" on June 7th. The problem of the squatters and the phantom registrars, however, as not been dealt with, so whether or not anyone will really gain from this is debatable. In their defence Eurid adds:

It has been suggested that by publishing a list we are helping the cyber squatters. We believe that these people are well aware of the releases anyway by studying the WHOIS database. By publishing a list, EURid wants to give everybody, including those parties who applied for names during Sunrise, a chance to see when the names will become available again. It also allows EURid to be transparent in what is happening with the Sunrise domain names.

So they are now being transparent? That's a novelty for them considering the rejection notices that they sent applicants during sunrise...

Frank Michlick points to an article in today's Washington Post that discusses domain typos in more detail. Although the article does not mention .eu domains directly it isn't hard to see what can happen if the examples cited are to go by:

The Post, using a software tool created by the Microsoft Research division, found hundreds of active Web sites showing Google ads at addresses that appear to be misspelled variations of well-known company names, known as "typo-domains." Their owners are known as "typosquatters." The Post generated roughly 100 random misspellings of "www.earthlink.net" and found 38 sites using variations of the Earthlink name "parked" at a Google-owned service called Oingo.com. All 38, which includes "dearthlink.net" and "rearthlink.net," serve Google ads. Likewise, nearly a dozen sites with variations of "Verizon Wireless" were showing Google ads, with some linked to the company's official VerizonWireless.com. That suggests that Verizon Wireless may be paying Google for ads on typosquatter-owned sites. Verizon Wireless spokesman John Johnson said the company has a successful track record of getting such sites shut down and takes "a particularly dim view of typosquatters."

And how much money is this worth? That's the scary bit. One source states:

"I know quite a few guys making over a million dollars a year from advertising on their domains," he said. "It's like a 24-hour money-printing machine."

According to domain blog it may be possible to register domain names that the Commission has blocked:

With a good reason it is possible to ask for reserved names The European Commission has reserved a number of .eu domain names that are consequently not available for registration. However, should there be organisations or private persons wishing to register some of these reserved names, the Commission is willing to consider releasing said names provided they no longer have any use for them and are provided with a good motivated argument as to why the names should be released. Requests to release reserved names should be addressed to EURid who will then forward the request to the Commission.

A full list of the names that have been reserved is available here A cursory glance at the list does not show that many overly attractive domains, though there are some which could be of interest.

Domain monetisers employ many tricks to draw traffic to their websites. One of them is using typographical errors, which can be due to people either typing in the wrong address (bad typing) or simply not being sure of the spelling. A quick look at some of the bigger brand names reveals at least one prominent typo squat in the .eu namespace: gooogle.eu - note the three o's instead of the normal one. The same typo has been registered (by other parties) in other namespaces, while the attempt to do so in the IE namespace failed with the registration being pulled by the registry within a couple of days. The problem with typos is that by their very nature they are accidental ie. predicting every possible permutation of a domain name (and its linked brand or product name) is not an easy task. However if you choose easy to spell, memorable domain names it can be easier to avoid falling prey to this kind of issue.

The .eu dispute resolution mechanism is called ADR (Alternative Dispute Resolution). You can find more information about the system and how to avail of it on the dedicated site Funnily enough Eurid have registered the domain adr.eu, but for some odd reason have not created any DNS entries nor are they actively using it. Unfortunately nobody seems to have told the web designers who have created a nice big logo using the non-functioning url adr.eu: On the main Eurid website the latest news item is not displaying, however if you go to the news page you will be greeted with this:

The first .eu dispute has been settled via the .eu’s Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Policy. Currently there are a handful of disputes being processed and just over 100 cases have been initiated. All verdicts are published by the Czech arbitration Court who facilitates the .eu dispute resolutions.

Could this be due to the costs involved? Why does this sound so bad? Well it could simply be that the translation is not very good. The original text reads:

Le premier litige relatif à un nom de domaine en .eu vient d’être tranché par le biais d’une procédure de résolution de conflits ADR. A ce jour, une centaine de recours de ce type ont été introduits et plusieurs d’entre eux sont en cours de traitement. Tous les verdicts sont publiés sur le site de la Cour d’Arbitrage Tchèque, laquelle est en charge du traitement des litiges.

Before you do anything else you should check who has registered the .eu domain you are interested in. Unfortunately this might not be an easy task. While Eurid offer a traditional whois lookup and a web-based form the quality of the data provided is not particularly good, nor is it uniform. If the information is available you should try to identify the following information:

• Which registrar registered the domain
• Are there any nameservers configured/listed?
• If there are nameservers where does the domain point to?

Other information, such as who actually owns the domain, may not be as easily visible as with other TLDs. For example, the output on this domain via traditional whois is:

% % WHOIS isquattedyour Domain: isquattedyour Status: REGISTERED Registered: Mon Apr 24 2006 Registrant: Please visit www.eurid.eu for webbased whois. Agent Technical Contacts: Phone: +352.26372525 Fax: +352.26372537 Email: eu-hostmaster@eurodns.com Registrar: Name: EuroDNS S.A. Website: eurodns.com Nameservers: ns.blacknightsolutions.com ns2.blacknightsolutions.com

Obviously there are nameservers or you wouldn't be able to view this page, but who owns the domain? The web-based whois service is a little bit more helpful:

Name isquattedyour Status REGISTERED Registered 24 April 2006 Last update 24 April 2006 17:08 Registrant Name Neylon Michele Organisation Blacknight Internet Solutions Ltd Language English Address address Phone phone Email email Registrar technical contacts Name Goubet Pierre-Yves Organisation EuroDNS S.A. Language English Address 41 z.a. am Bann L-3372 Leudelange Luxembourg Phone +352.26372525 Fax +352.26372537 Email eu-hostmaster@eurodns.com Registrar Organisation EuroDNS S.A. Website eurodns.com Nameservers ns.blacknightsolutions.com ns2.blacknightsolutions.com History

However I have nothing to hide and have provided all the details. If you perform the same search on a lot of other .eu domains you won't find as much information. In most cases all you will see is the Registrar technical contacts and the registrant (owner) email address without any other idenitifiable information. This lack of clarity and transparency in whois data could prove to be highly problematic going forward, as it does not conform to the level of best practices one would expect of a domain registry and can lead to confusion.

If you want to keep track of how many .eu domains have been registered to date, with a breakdown by "country" Eurid maintains a status page which is updated every 15 minutes