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

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: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.

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.