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Register.com Loses Class action Lawsuit
Anonymous Blowhard writes "I found out today I am a member of a class that just beat register.com in New York Supreme Court!! The suit was filed by Michael Zurakov because register.com pointed his newly registered domain(s) to 'coming soon' web pages. Mr. Zurakov receives $12,500 for the harm caused by register.com while members of the class can look forward to a settlement of $5 off their next domain renewals. Register.com will also pay 'reasonable Class Counsel attorneys'
fees and costs in an amount not to exceed $642,500.00, subject to Court approval.' If you want to exclude yourself from the class, giving up any settlement and not being bound by its terms, you have to opt-out."
NY is different than most states because the title of their trial court is the "Supreme Court", which is what most people think is the title for the highest court in the state.
I used to work for Register.com. They sell domains to people that have less computer knowledge then your average AOL user. Once people have a clue about domains they tend to shift to other Registrars. Register.com domains are costly because of the support given. Guys that don't even realize what a domain is or how it is used tend to be the client base for RCOM. As for the issue with the coming soon page I think the fella was doing a money grab.
You might as well link the law.com article
That's what I'll be doing - here's the linked section:
C. IF YOU WANT TO OBJECT TO THE SETTLEMENT, BUT STILL BE A PART OF THE SETTLEMENT CLASS.
If you do not request exclusion from the Settlement Class, you may object to any aspect of the proposed Settlement, including the fairness of the settlement, the attorneys' fees and costs or the adequacy of Plaintiff or Class Counsel or Notice, by filing and serving a written objection. Your written objection must state the case name and number ((Zurakov v. Register.com, Case No. 01-600703), the grounds for your objection and your full name and address, and your objection must be filed with the Clerk of the Court, 60 Centre Street, New York, NY, 10007 with a copy to Counsel. SUCH OBJECTIONS MUST BE RECEIVED NO LATER THAN OCTOBER 14, 2003. If you mail an objection to the Settlement, then you bear the risk of any problems with the mails. Such objections will be considered at the Settlement Hearing (see section VIII below), at which you may appear if you wish.
Register.com is not an ISP, but a registration service. This means they did not simply have pages loaded by default on his new server, which lots of ISPs do. They redirected the domain name to a different IP address than he intended. That domain name should have come up as "404-No Such Domain."
There's a small article at law.com about it:
2 6
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=10510282390
Apparently he was unable to change it to direct it to his website for several months after registering it.
I suspect that register.com may have shot themselves in the foot by claiming that the contract did not explicitly give Mr Zurakov
exclusive control over the site. The judge did not agree, saying that if if it wasn't explicit in the contract 'to register' a site should give you more than just a listing in whois.
Register.com should have just admitted that something went wrong with their DNS assignment system and settled out of court. They probably could have gotten away with $5000 or so.