Bob Parsons, CEO and founder of GoDaddy.com, has blogged about the .EU landrush fiasco. This were the requirements to be a .EU registrar:
To be a registrar for the .EU registry, companies had to:
1. Attest that they were an individual business entity and were only applying for one registrar accreditation.
2. Attest that they were offering registrations to their customers on an equal basis.
3. Make a deposit of 10,000 euros (about US $12,000).
That was about all it took to be a .EU registrar. There was no verification that .EU registrars were really registrars, or were ICANN accredited. In fact, the EURid registry made no attempt to verify that those who applied to be .EU registrars were really businesses at all. |
The problem was that some companies, instead of only registering their real active registrars, created hundreds of phantom "registrars". So when the landrush period began there was hundreds of accredited .EU registrars, many of them are not legitimate registrars. Some of those companies that gamed the system are going to auction the names that were requested by more than one customer, and are going to make a fortune on the .EU landrush. Of course, those companies who created bogus registrars have more chances at getting really good domains. Proper precautions should have been taken to prevent this scam. Hopefully the EURid registry fix the problem, or some european authority forces them to do it.
(Source: Bob Parson's Blog) |