The .EU Landrush Fiasco

googleking writes "Bob Parsons, CEO and Founder of GoDaddy.com, has blogged about the .EU landrush fiasco. During the landrush phase for names which opened last Friday, established 'big name' registrars got exactly equal chances of registering names as did anyone who chose to bill themselves as a registrar. Bob asserts that hundreds of these new 'registrars' are actually fake fronts for a big name US company." From the article: "Here's how it works: All the accredited registrars line up and each registrar gets to make one request for a .EU domain name. If the name is available, the registrar gets the name for its customer. If the name is not available, the registrar gets nothing. Either way, after making the request, the registrar goes to the back of the line and won't get to make another request, until all the registrars in the line in front of it make their requests. This continues until all requests have been made and the landrush process is over ... The landrush process on the surface seems very fair. But there was something wrong with the process -- very wrong."

Comments

Go figure...

[Disavian]

If there's a way to cheat, it will be found.

"DNS servers too busy"

[SonicBlue]

I ordered mine a week ago, still haven't gotten it. Bah.

That is BS

[protich]

I was involved in the Landrush. Each registrar was allowed one request per second. NO round-robin/line as mentioned on the sumarry.

Re:That is BS

[LunaticTippy]

I was involved in the Landrush. Each registrar was allowed one request per second. NO round-robin/line as mentioned on the sumarry.

You don't understand?! If registrar X had 99 bogus registrars set up they get 100/second. That's more than 1/second.

Re:That is BS

[LunaticTippy]

I do understand it.

No, you don't.

That is misleading, the point is each of the registrars have equal change of connecting make request every second.

A registrar following the spirit of the rules has 1 request/sec.
A registrar with 99 fraud registrars has 100 request/sec.

Think of the line as 1 second. Every time you make a request you go to the end of the "line." Someone with 99 shell registrars goes to the end of the "line." By the time he gets to the front of the 1 second line, their 99 other requests have also been processed.

sour grapes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like Mr. Parsons is just upset he didn't think of making the phony baloney companies like his competitors did.
He lost out, and they'll definetly get away with it.

Sometimes scams pay out. Not any more unethical than him selling out to MS for his parked domains.

Re:sour grapes?

[E IS mC(Square)]

So what? Even if its a case of sour grapes, if that has happened (and I have no reason to believe that it has not happened), then its WRONG.

We all know how valueable domain names are. I thought somebody would have learnt the lesson watching lawsuits after lawsuits on domain names, and would be extra careful while distributing a new list. But no. We continue to let system fuck itself.

This is why....

[SpaceCadetTrav]

This is why I live in the .com.

Umm...

[Opportunist]

Did anyone expect anything else? It's kinda funny how naive they were, actually thinking that people would be "good" and play by the "rules".

Re:Umm...

[SatanicPuppy]

It is pretty sad, but, from experience, as soon as you start telling your superiors it won't work "because of human nature", you're already screwed. You have to make something up like, "We can't do it this way because our systems will be swamped by the massive server traffic."

I'd have set it up so that people had to apply to be able to register, so that they'd be able to weed out the illegit registrars, then I'd make everyone submit their lists, in order of preference, and work my way down.

Making it spammable is just begging for trouble.

slashdot.eu

[fusto99]

So did anyone register slashdot.eu yet?

Re:slashdot.eu

[cashman73]

Yup. Somebody named, "Caller Robin," in London got it on April 7.

Good leaning experience for .xxx

[MooseTick]

If the .xxx ever gets implemented, this will be a good learning experience. You know there will be a massive dash for millions of xxx domains. Whoever gets to some first may become instant millionaires! I know I'll be going for bbqplate.xxx so I can show bbq porno to the masses!

Who said business is fair?

[winkydink]

So GoDaddy got outsmarted by somebody who gamed the system and now they're whining about it in the CEO's blog. Kwticherbitchin and figure out how to make money, not whine over lost opportunities.

Re:Who said business is fair?

[graffix_jones]

I can't believe that you think that this scam is how business works... any time you can 'game' a system, chances are that proper precautions should have been taken to prevent it, and it should've been illegal.

The point he's trying to make is that there were several unimplemented methods that would've prevented these bogus registrars from gaming the system, and in fact people running the EURid land rush were notified in advance by several 'legitimate' registrars about the loopholes in the system, and refused to do anything about it (in fact going so far as to completely ignore them).

Enron also 'gamed' the system, and look how much damage that caused. It's fair to say that this could also have some dire financial consequences against those who were meant to benefit from this process.

I think his suggestions at the end of TFA have merit, and it would be nice to see something done about this scam... I have a hunch, though, that those in the EURid who allowed the system to be 'gamed' have a financial stake in the gaming process... otherwise these loopholes would've been closed long before the land rush began.

Re:Who said business is fair?

[wytcld]

The problem's like this: There's an inverse relationship between corruption and overall, long-term, culture-wide profitability. Yeah, somebody usually manages to get rich even in the most corrupt places. But it's a far smaller proportion that manages it. And even armored cars and bodyguards don't prevent the kidnappings and assasinations that go along with that sort of culture.

Do you really think Western Europe and North America would be better off if our business cultures fully embraced the models of Nigeria and Russia?

Re:The message is clear:

[Chris Pimlott]

The proper form is "NetCraft confirms it: .EU is dying"

I do not think that means what you think...

[pla]

The landrush process on the surface seems very fair.

We apparently have radically different ideas of what counts as "fair".


established 'big name' registrars got exactly equal chances of registering names as did anyone who chose to bill themselves as a registrar

And what about Joe Jones and Sally Brown? Or more to the point, what about Steve McDonald, Cindy Frye, or Dan Walmart?

What you call "fair", I decry as massively biased right from the start. The very flaw you intend to point out, rather than making the process less fair, has imparted the only truly "fair" part of the entire dog-n'-pony.


I'll consider the process fair when humans get first choice, and trying to trademark common single English words carries the corporate death-penalty. Until then, let's not bother quibbling about whether conqueror-X or conqueror-Y managed to rape the most natives.

Pisses me off...

[oO_oO_Dave_Oo_Oo]

People are just too greedy these days.

Dave
----------------
www.da.eu
www.dav.eu
www.dave.eu
www.david.eu

In other news...

[Jugalator]

The TLD hijacking phenomenon that's a decade old profitable business model didn't suddenly stop that day. :-p

Re:Who cares?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Who really cares about getting EU addresses anyway? I guess asking that makes me sound like an isolated bumpkin American, but honestly the same goes for .us and pretty much any other TLD that isn't .com. Do companies really stand to make megamillions selling non-.com addresses? I just don't see it.

Halfway through the initial registration, the .eu domain became the third largest, behind .com and .uk. They have probably passed .uk by now. It is not shaping up to be one of those ignored TLDs. So, yes a lot of people care about it and yes big money is involved.

Consider the source...

[Cherita Chen]

Has anyone stopped to consider the source? Bob Parsons is notorious for his whining... Anyone who takes a gander at his blog every now and then is privy to the ex-Marine, poor-boy-done-good, megalomaniac either tooting his own horn, or complaining about the business practices of his competitors. Gimme-a-big-fat-Break!

Not only that

[0xABADC0DA]

But the other 99 fake registrars don't need to re-issue requests made by the others (whether granted or not). So they not only can make more requests per second, but those requests are more likely to be still available.

Why not auction them off?

[fortinbras47]

I think the basic issue is that price of a domain name is significantly below the market value. As I understand it, there are therefore huge incentives for Mr.DomainCamper to try to grab coke.eu for $10 and try to resell it to Coca Cola for $10 billion. There are also huge incentives for Coca Cola to create their own registrar company and get coke.eu before Mr.DomainCamper does. (btw, I know nothing about coke.eu, I picked it at random.)

A more efficient way to initially allocate major domain names might be to run an auction.

Currently, domain names are allocated according to the law of capture. He/she who first claims the domain name and pays a nominal fee has rights to the name. It IS like a land grab where you can acquire the rights to land by just showing up, except it's even worse because to grab land in the American West you generally had to show up and use it.

My rough idea:
(1) Auction period will last one month
(2) At the end of the auction period, domain names that were bid on will go to the highest bidder. (As long as bid is above the minimum bid.) (3) After the auction ends, domain names will be allocated under the old retarded process

This doesn't solve all domain name problems, but it would get popular domain names to the people/companies that value the name the most.

Re:Why not auction them off?

[bheer]

The problem with your appeoach is that it makes the Internet a haven for those with money. Sure, money talks on the net, but much less than in any other medium -- which is why Amnesty, Greenpeace, DemocracyUnderground etc find it most convenient to disseminate their message online.

If we had a domain name auction system, how'd you like to bet the government of China would snap up rights to amnesty.org?

The Problem with Queuing

[CodeBuster]

There seems to be a special place in the liberal heart for the notion of queues and everyone lining up for their "fair share" of whatever is being doled out. It sounds like a good idea in principle, but in practice this type of scheme inevitably falls victim to the realities of human nature. I remember experiencing something like this first hand when the housing authority at my university decided that a limited number of subsidized campus housing units would be doled out based upon a queue system. Of course, they thought that everyone would be nice and orderly, but in practice people camped outside the office for days before the rush began with one person "holding" spaces for twenty of his friends and people buying and selling places in line. They opened the process at midnight and everyone rushed the doors. The campus police were overwhelmed and they were lucky that there wasn't a riot. The point of all this is that the market has demonstrated time and again that queuing and rationing ultimately fail to satisfy anyone as somebody will always get the short end of the stick even though they would have paid more for item x than item y. Instead of trying to enforce some silly queuing system where people can and will find ways to cheat why did they not have an auction instead? Obviously some names like sex.eu are going to be worth hell of a lot more than blog.eu so why not let competing bidders determine exactly how much more? They could have used the proceeds to create a holding company for long term management of the domain and offer whatever names that were left at a fixed price. The conservative Europeans should have known better than to try and create a non-price based system that could not be abused by those crafty American companies and their high priced consultants.

Re:The Problem with Queuing

[oh_my_080980980]

Your post is one incredible troll. Insightful! Please.

If had bothered to come down from your ivory tower and read the blog, you would understand the problem was bogus registrars appearing at the last minute with many being THE SAME COMPANY! They were bogus because they were not real registrars but rather companies squating on a domain name. If the EURID had bothered to do a background check on these companies, they could have prevented the abuse of the system. EURID can still fix the problem but they show no willingness to do so.

Euro-zone is a big market (bigger than US?)

[fantomas]

I don't have the figures (any economists please? google?) but I am pretty sure that the Euro-zone of countries is now similar to North America in its size as a market for products. I'm pretty sure that countries in the Euro-zone often have similar product specifications due to common laws as well, so yup, I'd say branding your product as .eu is as important as a .com.

I'm in the UK and I purposely *avoid* .com products, hey, I don't want to pay for a company to ship a paperback 3000 miles from the USA, I'd prefer them to post it from somewhere in the EU and charge me that instead (pretty well the same rate as from the UK). Don't have to pay import taxes either...

Unfair?

[mattwarden]

Unfair?

* People set up process that my 5-year old niece would have realized wouldn't work.
* Process doesn't work.

Seems pretty fair to me.

May I Be The First To Say...

[Anonymous Coward]

www.mondi.eu

Re:As a European I hate to say it...

[ktappe]

this is what happens when you regulate a market.

No, it's what happens when you claim you've regulated a market so all the law-abiding citizens believe you, but the criminals figure out that you've really done little-to-no regulation at all and create anarchy.

-Kurt

I'd argue that...

[jd]

Nobody has any business buying more than one or two domain names anyway. Most things would be far better off in a subdomain (movies, for example), where they won't pollute the namespace AND it is explicitly clear as to who does the owning. (This would also eliminate most trademark issues, as then differentiation would be built into the system and deceptive naming would become considerably harder. For this reason, coincidental similarities in names would not be so significant as trademark issues, as it would often be provable that no confusion exists.) It also encourages cybersquatting and typo-squatting.

The clutter isn't helped by lazy, inefficient admins and registrars who don't maintain records correctly, but that's another issue altogether.

I can't help but think it would save everyone a lot of grief if all TLD admins, registrars, cybersquatters and ICANN members were just rounded up and sent to Siberia for a couple of decades.

So who are the "Company Xs"?

[bVork]

I'd really like to know which companies pulled this scam.

I found one of them. Dotster is the one behind a whole bunch of Vancouver-based registrars.

Has anyone else had any luck tracking down the other companies behind this?