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."

Comments

damages?

[lseltzer]

$12.5K for that? How was he harmed? He had tools to point it elsewhere.

Re:I won this class action lawsuit...

[the_bahua]

In one of the most recently settled tobacco company CA suits, the lawyers fees alone were in the billions. Class action lawyers are working in the honeypot of litigative law.

Lawyer Spam!

[NoSuchGuy]

You have to opt out to exclude yourself from a class action suit? - What a world!

This was a stupid lawsuit.

[CrazyJoel]

Just stupid. I've got several sites registered on register.com. I don't see what is so offensive about having a Coming Soon page until it switches to your DNS. That's like 2 days?

What an idiot!

Now, he's costing them $600,000. Which ain't pocket change. I hope they can handle it. They've done pretty good. Customer service is okay. A little slow, but they answer their phones.

Re:This was a stupid lawsuit.

[Black Perl]

That was terrible! Ads on the page, pop-under ads, and pop-away ads (which pop up when you leave the site). I'm feeling a little less sympathy for Register.com now.

Re:This was a stupid lawsuit.

[__aavonx8281]

Its not stupid at all. Basically the guy paid for a domain name. Register.com put up a 'coming soon' page with their own advertising on it and didn't pay the guy for it. Register.com had no right to the domain name, before or after the sale. They can put up a nice page so you don't get a 404, but they shouldn't have been able to advertise on the page, even if its only for 24 hours, without the owner's consent. That was their own fault and they deserve to get sued for trying to get free advertising. How hard would it have been to put in some fine print on their site when you buy a domain letting you know you're going to have an advertisement page on your domain while you wait for DNS?

Sigh

[gclef]

He didn't win. It was a settlement. Register decided to settle, rather than fight this stupid lawsuit. Note: the lawyer made more money than anyone else in this stupid little charade.

Is it obvious that I'm not exactly impressed with this? Register initially pointed his domain to a "coming soon" page when he registered his domain, and they should have put that they would do this in their contract, fair enough. Is that worthy of a lawsuit? Hell no. Is that worthy of hundreds of thousands of dollars in "damages"? Hell no.

Re:Sigh

[JaredOfEuropa]

Is that worthy of a lawsuit? Hell no.

This guy probably saw this as a way to make some easy money. Yup, his free $12,5k is costing the company over $600k. Guess who will pay for all that in the end?

Now ISPs will either remove these 'under construction' pages or be more specific about them in their contracts. Watch for the next leech who sues his ISP for not providing an 'under construction' page resulting in a DNS error message. Sigh. I am beginning to appreciate my own country's legal system more and more... over here, you have to provide (shock! gasp!) actual proof of damages or you get nothing.

Re:Harm?

[sirius_bbr]

What exactly is the harm in a coming soon website?

I think the harm is that register.com can use these coming-soon-websites to get advertising revenue by putting adds on 'property' (the domain) they don't own.

i really don't mean to be anti-us

[fuckfuck101]

But this is the kind of stuff we here in the UK hear about Americans, if they trip over because they're drunk they sue their shoe companies, or the council who made the pavement.

This is a real turn-off, it portrays Americans in a really bad light, I know your corporates are all like this but do you the people need to be to?

Re:i really don't mean to be anti-us

[EasyTarget]

Well, I guess the general population takes it's cues for behaviour from the rest of the population.

If all they see in society and the media is spin, profit over ethics and threats (I'll sue you). Where the amount of money you have is generally the only relevent measure of somebody's value or 'worth'. Where everything you ever see, hear or read is distorted in some manner by these forces.

How do you expect people to behave differently?

Here in the UK things are nearly as bad. I personally reckon the BBC is probably the only thing that has stopped us decending to the unfortunate state the US has found itself in.

So next time you hear of a little thieving toe-rag (oops, sorry, I meant underprivaleged young man who has fallen to peer-pressure) coming out with the usual excuses ('I brought it off a man in a pub', 'I was threatened by the way the old man ran away from me so I kicked his head in' etc..) blame the spin doctors and barristers.. The criminaly are just learning from the masters.

Our lives are now nothing more than manipulation, external and internal.

why to sue?

[jlemmerer]

I think that register.com wanted to offer a service, because maybe in their eyes a "coming soon" page is better than a 404 page. It would have been better (in my opinion) to just write them that you don't want to have this "service" than to suing them. But you can see this as you want...

Won the law suit?

[eadz]

You get $5
Lawyer gets : $642,500 ... so who really won?

Sue the Lawyers!

[Azghoul]

I mean, come on now. I read a post a while back here from some guy defending lawyers... and it made some sense. But then you get this kind of nonsense, which is quite obviously a frivolous lawsuit -- and noone really gets anything but the damn lawyers involved...

And the lawyers wonder why we want the vast majority of them boiled in oil?

Oooohhhh Ahhhhhh my domain name pointed to a shitty "coming soon" page for two days!! The humanity!! I want to go bitch slap that guy.

The Land of Opportunity

[akiaki007]

It used to be that the "American Dream" was owning a home. Now, it seems, it is to be able to find something that bothers you ever so slightly and then try to sue someone for it. The "American Dream" is to hire lawyers to take your case and to win a few bucks. If you do it right, you can get several million and invest it and retire at the age of 30. If you screw it up, like Sienfeld's Kramer, then you just keep on trying until you get that million bucks. That is the "American Dream." Screw buying a house. With a million bucks I can buy a mansion!