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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."
This is why I live in the .com.
Life in Orange County
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".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You don't understand?! If registrar X had 99 bogus registrars set up they get 100/second. That's more than 1/second.
Man, you really need that seminar!
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!
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
The proper form is "NetCraft confirms it: .EU is dying"
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.
People are just too greedy these days.
Dave
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www.da.eu
www.dav.eu
www.dave.eu
www.david.eu
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.
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.
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!
I'm not fat, just big boned...
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?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
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.
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.
www.mondi.eu
-Kurt
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
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.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
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?