Verizon lawsuit against DirectNic

[Brujah]

Verizon Suits DirectNic and Sigmund Solares et al. for Cybersquatting ? Over $28.8 Million Dollars in Damage Sought
http://www.domainnamenews.com/legal-...ge-sought/7360

[woj]

sucks to be them...

[kush]

Very interesting to say the least.

Would be curious to see some of the domain names in question.

[chupachups]

Well deserved

[will76]

Besides the overwhelming amount of identities to unwind in this case, the case may be an interesting one to watch in terms of jurisdictional issues as DirectNic Ltd is an offshore based company and other defendant companies and individuals are based in separate jurisdictions. Verizon claims in the filing that the jurisdiction is correct because the companies “conducted systematic and continuous business within Florida as a consolidated group of companies that operate the registrar that uses the domain name directNic.com

The have (or at least had) their offices in down town New Orleans. I noticed they changed the address of the company on the their website to "offshore", but to my knowledge they still live and operate in the US.

An important part of this case I skimmed over in reading the 32 page filing and Andrew points out at DNW is that these “infringing domains” were names that the company took over and monetized after the domains expiration. They were listed as the registrant for the period between when the domain names expired and were deleted. As Andrew points out the case “could have ramifications for most major domain name registrars and their expired domain parking practices, let alone “coming soon” placeholder pages”

This part pisses me off and has always gotten under my skin with domain registers. I can't stand how as soon as your domain expires they put up one of their parking pages. Even though I still have 30 days to renew it. I can understand when I lose it you can do what ever you want. But these guys aren't stupid, they use that 30 day window to not only make revenue but they get to test out your traffic. They way I understand it if they notice you have a good amount of traffic then when your 30 days are up and you don't renew THEY buy the domain before anyone else can. I think that practice shouldn't be allowed by registers. If you are a register, you should not also be buying up domains at an unfair advantage over your own clients and everyone else. I look at that like insider trading with stocks. No wonder they own 10,000's of domains.

I don't understand how this is legal. If the domain is not mine any more the second it expires than who's is it? If it is the registers then fucking don't make me pay for the time YOU are making money from my domain. If my domain expires and i wait 30 days to renew it, once it is renewed I wind up paying for the previous 30 days as well. But I didn't "own it" then, they must have because they put their shit on it and made money from it. So if they own it they should have paid for that time, not me. It's total bullshit.

The other thing that pisses me off is when you are late renewing they automatically switch the dns, but when you pay they don't switch it back. The first time I noticed this I was 1 day late on a bunch of domains, realized they expired, hurried up and renewed them, and then a week later noticed the parking page was still up because it was still set to their parking dns and not put back to my dns. If they can auto change to their parking dns when it expires, they can auto change it back when I pay. I wonder how often that happens to other people and how much extra money is made by them.

With that being said, I still like directnic, have over 300 domains with them. From my understanding a lot of registers do this, and I've never had any problems with them, just can't stand the way they handle expiring domains.

Yes I know, it's my fault the domain expired, but that is not the point so in advance to people who say that.

Looks like the "trying to profit and test drive domains" during the 30 day expiring period has come back to bite them in the ass. The amount of domains that expire every day and they throw their own parking pages up on has to be so many that there is no way they can check every one for potential trade mark violations. I would bet they didn't do this on purpose, and probably didn't even know about it till Verizon contacted them.

[Si]

Well Deserved.

[HandballJim]

you will still see people on here trying to sell verizontube. com, verizonbook. com, and myverizonspace. com.

[will76]

Originally Posted by HandballJim

you will still see people on here trying to sell verizontube. com, verizonbook. com, and myverizonspace. com.

yes because those people probably don't have any money to lose from a lawsuit or they are not in the US.

Verizon waited till someone with deep pockets that they could collect damages from was infringing and decided to go for a pay day.

[Nasty]

Looks like this is biz and usual for Verizon

This was from last year

OnlineNic Ordered to Pay $33 Million in ?Largest Cybersquatting Judgment Ever?

http://www.domainnamenews.com/legal-...-judgment/5865

[will76]

Originally Posted by Nasty

Looks like this is biz and usual for Verizon

This was from last year

OnlineNic Ordered to Pay $33 Million in ?Largest Cybersquatting Judgment Ever?

http://www.domainnamenews.com/legal-...-judgment/5865

Someone at Directnic (legal counsel I would assume) dropped the ball big time. If I would have know about this case (http://www.domainnamenews.com/legal-...-judgment/5865 ) and I would have if I was in their legal dept. I would have made sure that "verizon" was added to the bad word filter list, so if any domains with verizon in it expired that their parking pages wouldn't be displayed and the parking option would not be available on that domain at all to it's owner. Why take the chance with a company you know has a history for suing registers??? doesn't make sense. A 2 minute safeguard could have been setup to avoid all of this.

[Shoplifter]

This is my biggest issue with Directnic. The moment something expires, and in some cases even before the last day is out the DNS servers are changed and your page is parked. No due diligence about trademarks or whatever.

And when you renew your domain the DNS servers may not change back to the previous settings unless you go in and manually check them. In fact I had a situation where a high traffic domain did lapse for a day and I could not get it to reset to my previous DNS without calling them.

There was no way this was going to end well.

[$5 submissions]

Originally Posted by Brujah

Verizon Suits DirectNic and Sigmund Solares et al. for Cybersquatting ? Over $28.8 Million Dollars in Damage Sought
http://www.domainnamenews.com/legal-...ge-sought/7360

lol @ the second comment on that blog post. All that assclownery for a no follow link

[fatfoo]

$28.8 Million - now that's a lot of money.

[will76]

Originally Posted by Shoplifter

This is my biggest issue with Directnic. The moment something expires, and in some cases even before the last day is out the DNS servers are changed and your page is parked. No due diligence about trademarks or whatever.

And when you renew your domain the DNS servers may not change back to the previous settings unless you go in and manually check them. In fact I had a situation where a high traffic domain did lapse for a day and I could not get it to reset to my previous DNS without calling them.

There was no way this was going to end well.

yeap, then you have to wait some times several hours for the damn dns to propagate back. burns my ass, so i try even harder to not let a domain expire because i like everything else about them. but when one does expire and that shit happens it gets me so mad i want to move all 300 of my domains to someone else.

[TwinCities]

It appears to me that OFFSHORE SHELL companies mean very little for privacy or liability. All someone has to do is figure out who pulls all the strings outside of the shell then names them personally. Then through discovery they figure out who the PERSONAL owners are and likely held liable.