It's The Register - what did you expect? They're not exactly known as being
a bastion of journalistic excellence.
Personally, anything that even remotely looks like it contains editorial
content masquerading as news is passed over by me...
-rwr
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of WebWiz
> Sent: Monday, April 30, 2001 3:12 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Hijacked domain returned to rightful owner
>
>
> The details as related in this story make absolutely
> no sense.
>
> Something's missing here, as none of this holds together
> when the "logic probe" is applied to it.
>
> Regards,
> Eric Longman
> Atl-Connect Internet Services
>
> +-------------------------------------------------------+
> | Atl-Connect Internet Services http://www.atlcon.net |
> | 3600 Dallas Hwy Ste 230-288 770 590-0888 |
> | Marietta, GA 30064-1685 [EMAIL PROTECTED] |
> +-------------------------------------------------------+
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Monday, April 30, 2001 2:41 PM
> Subject: Hijacked domain returned to rightful owner
>
>
> Not the best PR for OpenSRS.
>
> Hijacked domain returned to rightful owner
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/18619.html
>
> The case of the dropped domain and the PR company that we covered
> last week
> has been sorted out - with it returning to the original owners.
>
> Last Monday, we revealed how Portfolio Metrica were aghast when their
> company
> Web site disappeared to be replaced with an American site
> offering free ISP
> access. We spoke to the site's new owner, Mark Duance, who claimed he had
> grabbed the domain www.portfoliocomms.com legally. On the
> Wednesday, he put
> the domain up for auction on eBay.
>
> Over the weekend, Portfolio Metrica managed to take back the domain and
> replace its original site by proving to Tucows (the new
> registrar) who they
> were. Mark Duane emailed us to register his displeasure.
>
> There are clearly several questions here: Was the domain legally re-
> registered? How does the change take place first of all? And what can
> companies and individuals do to make sure they don't wake up to the same
> scenario?
>
> Portfolio Metrica clearly feels it was badly done by and is
> overjoyed it has
> its domain back. "Our domain name was taken unlawfully," said company
> director Mark Westaby, "but we've got it back and we're very pleased about
> that."
>
> It would also appear that despite Mr Duane's assurance he did
> nothing wrong
> that the name was not legitimately taken. The problem lies in renewal
> notices. Because Portfolio Metrica's original registrar had gone bust, the
> forwarding information was somehow lost. Mr Duane re-registered one of
> Portfolio's domains and subsequently received the renewal notices. Thus he
> became aware of the other domains that Portfolio had registered -
> including
> portfoliocomms.com.
>
> Obviously this raises an enormous number of legal and protocol questions.
> One
> apparent expert on such matters backed up the resulting decision to hand
> back
> the domain to Portfolio. The new whois did not offer a new registration
> date. "The domain was re-registered on opensrs," said Domaingator on
> Afternic.com. "Opensrs automatically creates a NEW date the date
> it was re-
> registered if the name was actually expired (ie., released by Network
> Solutions Inc). No exceptions. The April date likewise is suspicious. The
> name was ON Hold for Payment but was not yet released by NSI.
> Case closed."
>
> Despite this, it would seem that we are looking in the mouth of
> an enormous
> increase in these types of problems as the two-year renewal date
> arrives for
> most companies' Web sites. Software is freely available on the Internet
> which, with a bit of know-how, can get you first to any dropped
> names. It is
> clear that the Internet's DNS is not sufficiently water-tight to prevent
> argument of rightful owner of a particular Web site.
>
> Unless someone - the NSI basically - gets their act in order, this will
> become a big, big problem (maybe NSI is too busy working out how
> it entrench
> itself in the .com domain to bother actually running it).
>
> You heard it here first. �
>
>
