Re: Domain name misuse

Read on:

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2001/02/morgenstern.htm

FTC Halts Domain Name Scam
Thousands of Consumers Pay Up To Fend Off Fictional Poachers

The Federal Trade Commission has asked a U.S. District Court Judge
to halt
an Internet domain name scheme that dupes consumers into
needlessly
registering variations of their existing domain names by
deceptively
contending that a third party, acting in bad faith, is about to
claim it.
The agency estimates that, at a minimum, 27,000 consumers may have
been
victims of the scam. At the agency's request, the court has issued
a
Temporary Restraining Order, frozen the defendants' assets, and
shut down
their Web sites, pending trial. The FTC has asked the court to bar
the
scheme permanently and order consumer redress.

According to the FTC, consumers - many of them operating small
businesses on
the 'Net - received unsolicited fax solicitations stating, "URGENT
NOTICE OF
IDENTICAL DOMAIN NAME APPLICATION BY A THIRD PARTY." The
letterhead
identifies the sender as either Electronic Domain Name Monitoring
or
Corporate Domain Name Monitoring. The solicitation warns that an
application
for a domain name almost identical to the recipient's has been
"submitted to
the National Domain Name Registry (NDNR) for registration," by an
unidentified third party. For example, the owner of a site
"www.sobi-sky.org" was told that an application had been submitted
to obtain
the domain name "www.sobi-sky.net" The solicitation says,
"Consequently, it
is our opinion that this application may have been submitted in
bad faith. .
.." The solicitation lists four reasons someone might want a
copy-cat domain
name, including "disrupting the business of a competitor," or
intentionally
attempting to lure someone else's customers by creating a
confusingly
similar Web address. The fax solicitation offers to block the
application by
obtaining the copy-cat domain name for the fax recipient for a fee
of $70.
It warns that, if the consumer fails to act, "NDNR WILL NOT BE
LIABLE FOR
THE LOSS OF DOMAIN NAME LICENSE, IDENTICAL OR CONFUSINGLY SIMILAR
USE OF
YOUR COMPANY'S NAME; OR INTERRUPTION OF BUSINESS ACTIVITY OR
BUSINESS
LOSSES."

According to the FTC, no third party has applied for the name, and
the
information in the fax solicitations is false, in violation of the
FTC Act.
An FTC memorandum to the court states, "Defendants representation
that a
third party has applied for a domain name by submitting a
registration
request to NDNR or any other entity is not only false, but also
nonsensical.
As explained in the declaration submitted by Internet Corporation
for
Assigned Names and Numbers, 'the purchase of domain names is
practically
instantaneous,' meaning there is no period during which an
application [for
a domain name] is pending and could be challenged."

The FTC has asked the court to issue preliminary and permanent
injunctions
to bar the deceptive marketing practices, to freeze the
defendants' assets
to preserve them for consumer redress, and to shut down Web sites
used to
promote the domain name scheme.

The defendants named in the FTC suit are Darren J. Morgenstern,
1268957
Ontario, Inc., and 1371772 Ontario Inc., doing business as
National Domain
Name Registry, Electronic Domain Name Monitoring, and Corporate
Domain Name
Monitoring. The companies are based in Toronto, Canada, with an
office in
Atlanta, Georgia.

The Commission vote to file the complaint was 5-0. It was filed in
U.S.
District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta
Division,
yesterday.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Shawn Sass" <shawn(at)sportsstuff.com>
To: "html list" <hwg-basics(at)mail.hwg.org>
Sent: Thursday, February 15, 2001 5:24 PM
Subject: Domain name misuse


Hello list!
I just got this notice from some corporate domain name
protection service saying that an attempt to register the
domain name sportsstuff.net may have been done in bad
faith.  I checked and the domain name sportsstuff.net has
been registered to someone since 1999.  When I go to the URL
it says no page found at this url but the page has links to
yahoo stuff.  Why did I get a notice about this now if it's
been registered since 1999?  I'm going to call this
protection service and see what the deal is but they're
already closed today and I'm curious.  Has anybody
experienced this before?
TIA!

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