Sony Forgets To Pay For Domain, Hilarity Ensues

First time accepted submitter Dragoness Eclectic writes Early Tuesday, gamers woke up to find out that they couldn't log in to any Sony Online Entertainment games--no Everquest, no Planetside 2, none of them. Oddly, the forums where company reps might have posted some explanation weren't reachable, either. A bit of journalistic investigation by EQ2Wire came across the explanation: SOE forgot to renew the domain registration on SonyOnline.net, the hidden domain that holds all their nameservers. After 7 weeks of non-payment post-expiration, NetworkSolutions reclaimed the domain, sending all access to Sony's games into an internet black hole. Sony has since paid up. SOE's president, John Smedley, has admitted that the expiration notices were being sent to an "unread email" address.

Comments

Re:Black hole?

[theskipper]

There's no law per se, but there is a recent ICANN requirement called "Whois Accuracy Data Specification". It requires registrars to contact the registrant and click an emailed link as validation that their whois info is correct. The domain can be suspended if the validation isn't done within 15 days.

The intent is good but the implementation is pretty mindboggling. They're expecting every owner of a domain name to check that the email sent to them is not a phishing attempt...how that's supposed to work reliably is anyone's guess.

So, yeah, owners are supposed to verify to the registrars that the info is accurate which you could say is "ICANN's law". But not legally. Here's one of many articles that goes deeper into the issue:

http://blog.easydns.org/2014/0...

Re:Black hole?

[ketomax]

I bought mine for 10 no problems.

Re:Black hole?

[ArcadeNut]

Network Solutions offers it:

http://www.networksolutions.co...