Network Solutions Sued for Cyber-Squatting

IRNI writes "TechTV News has an article about hoarded domain names. A man is bringing a class action lawsuit against Network Solutions claiming that they will not release leagally expired domain names. I know this to be true. One of my domains expired on the 6th and is still not available for the public to use." As far as I know, Network Solutions hasn't released any domain names that have expired in the last six months or more.

Release of domain name

[Halvard]

NSI [networksolutions.com] *has* released one I know of. I client of mine lost www.esni.com [esni.com]due to non-payment. The only problem was not receiving a bill. Not the 2 emails nor the paper bill that NSI says it sent.

I know of one other name/site I host that had the same problem but since he has only one (and not a ton going to the same site). Nobody would have wanted this name anyway since it has 18 characters vs. 4.

I called Mike (the once and maybe future owner of esni.com) to tell him that he wasn't recruiting anymore but that he was selling viagra for $6 bucks a pill from Korea to other Americans without a perscription. And the name has not one thing to do with the drug seller's name or business.

Truth be told, IBI registered this, not NSI (one of the new registrars). But that means NSI released it. And within a few weeks of the supposed billing. Hopefully, Mike will pursue it since it is the acronym of his company and the new corporate imagery is based on it. NSI offered to and then transfered me to what amounts to their legal office when I called about the name and no bills since obviously there was a problem. Hopefully, he'll get it back.

4 character are hard to come by.

difficult

[clarityclaire]

This behavoir seems to be a bit nasty when you consider the difficulty one faces these days trying to get a good domain name. I'm sure most people have noticed that the number of words necessary in a name for it to be available is getting longer. In attempting to find a domain I have had to resort to Latin and Ancient greek but thet is not even enough.

Back-taxes

[nezroy]

This summer, Network Solutions touched off a controversy when it warned customers with delinquent payments that it would auction off their domain names to recoup losses.

Why don't they just release the names back to the public, with the caveat that the next owner must pay-off whatever delinquent balance is outstanding on the domain? I mean, at $35/yr, you're not going to be able to run up that big a tab before getting your domain yanked from you :)

Recoup loesses?

[funkman]

This summer, Network Solutions touched off a controversy when it warned customers with delinquent payments that it would auction off their domain names to recoup losses. Critics were outraged and demanded that the expired names be returned to the public pool of available names instead.

Sounds like someone should fix their business model. Get money, then allocate domain name. Not allocate domain name, then wait for money.

Re:Decentralization

[Weezul]

No, a utility to manage your /etc/hosts file would be near useless. We need to consider diffrent more public systems. A top level DNS with voting for conflict resolution would be interesting. I suppose anyone who was registered for a domain name could bring a case, advocate, end up on a jurry, or metamoderation of jurrors (i.e. making shure that jurrors who vote on a dispute give a good reasons for there vote). There would not be any protection of trademarks or IP. It would just be a vote for who you like system, so microsoft.com would probable belong to microshit.com.

Anyway, thats one idea, but there are lots more ideas. We should have compeating top level domains to try these things out.

Decentralization

[waynem77]

The more I hear about domain name-related problems like this, the more I'm convinced that a single database of "official" domain names is just a bad idea. Several people on /. have suggested a scheme of competing domain name databases, with users choosing which service they wish to subscribe to. (Sorry about the grammar.)

Network Solutions is either (a) purposely overstepping their bounds here, or (b) incompetent. Whichever the case, the problem would be solved by competing databases; people could simply avoid using Network Solutions's db.

Of course, you can make your own "database" by simply editing your /etc/hosts file, but I think it would quickly become unwieldy. Unless you write a utility to manage it...

Well. I guess I know what I'm doing this weekend.