Tucows RDNH win against Australian Firm (2.Viewing)

"Tucows gets Reverse Domain Name Hijacking win against Australian Firm"

Link to the story: https://domainnamewire.com/2021/06/...n-name-hijacking-win-against-australian-firm/

Further below is a link to the actual decision, and here's an excerpt where they cover the RDNH aspect:

In the present matter, the Panel finds that the Complainant should have known at the time that it filed the Complaint that it could not prove one of the essential elements required, as it is clear that the Respondent registered the Domain Name before the Complainant filed and registered the Trademark.

Furthermore, the Panel also finds that the Complainant (or rather, its professional representative) has either been extremely careless, or has tried to mislead the Panel by 1) suggesting that the Domain Name was not being used at all, 2) not disclosing accurately the status of the United States trademark application and 3) not disclosing that the Complainant sought to purchase the Domain Name rather than the Respondent offering the Domain Name for out-of-pocket expenses.

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Decision: https://domainnamewire.com/wp-content/damstra.pdf

Question here...

With Tucows being a registrar how does the domain lock once it is in dispute?
Do they take Tucows word for it or does it temporarily have to be transferred to a different neutral registrar?

If not, maybe it is a legitimate question that needs to be addressed.
For the rest of us the domain in dispute automatically locks until the dispute is resolved.

Is there a double standard there?


[notify]FM[/notify] or [notify]GeorgeK[/notify] might be able to answer this one.

For me, I am just curious and it got me wondering.

The lock doesn't prevent the domain from being used, so I would believe that Tucows follows the process, no matter if it is their domain or not, otherwise, they would be risking their accreditation.

https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/udrp-rules-2015-03-11-en

The provider = dispute arbitration company

a) The Provider shall submit a verification request to the Registrar. The verification request will include a request to Lock the domain name.

(b) Within two (2) business days of receiving the Provider's verification request, the Registrar shall provide the information requested in the verification request and confirm that a Lock of the domain name has been applied. The Registrar shall not notify the Respondent of the proceeding until the Lock status has been applied. The Lock shall remain in place through the remaining Pendency of the UDRP proceeding. Any updates to the Respondent's data, such as through the result of a request by a privacy or proxy provider to reveal the underlying customer data, must be made before the two (2) business day period concludes or before the Registrar verifies the information requested and confirms the Lock to the UDRP Provider, whichever occurs first. Any modification(s) of the Respondent's data following the two (2) business day period may be addressed by the Panel in its decision.

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CIRA has rules against a registrar warehousing domains for profit, See section 5.1 (p)

https://www.cira.ca/policy/legal-agreement/registrar-agreement

However, I think we all highly suspect that this rule is routinely broken, and probably difficult to enforce. I wouldn't even be surprised if CIRA employees themselves invested in domain names. CIRA seems to have no boundaries when it comes to their will to find new ways to profit from their .CA monopoly. I once questioned CIRA about a suspicious registrar, only to be told that "its none of your business who they are or what they're doing." Obviously that made me feel even more suspicious of CIRA.

Clearly ICANN doesn't have any similar rules with the largest registrars buying up domain portfolio after domain portfolio.

[notify]FM[/notify], do you know of any other TLDs have rules like 5.1 (p) ?

rlm said:

[notify]FM[/notify], do you know of any other TLDs have rules like 5.1 (p) ?

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Good question. ICANN actually has a relevant provision in their registrar accreditation agreement, but it is currently without teeth:

https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/approved-with-specs-2013-09-17-en

3.7.9 Registrar shall abide by any Consensus Policy prohibiting or restricting warehousing of or speculation in domain names by registrars.

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However, so far, no such consensus policy has been adapted or discussed.

Most of the ccTLDs don't have their terms and conditions public, but I am quite sure some of them have policies that would address warehousing.

Very interesting, but not surprising. I don't really follow ICANN very closely, but based on their actions over the past 2 decades, I've always felt that board members act like they're bought and paid for, and it constantly feels like there is some conflict of interest going on. So I'm guessing they're probably well motivated to continue and let that issue of warehousing/speculation to slide. Its as blatant as blatant can be with GoDaddy publicly spending hundreds of millions buying up portfolios.

Oops, seems I never posted this (my personal opinion):

rlm said:

Very interesting, but not surprising. I don't really follow ICANN very closely, but based on their actions over the past 2 decades, I've always felt that board members act like they're bought and paid for, and it constantly feels like there is some conflict of interest going on. So I'm guessing they're probably well motivated to continue and let that issue of warehousing/speculation to slide. Its as blatant as blatant can be with GoDaddy publicly spending hundreds of millions buying up portfolios.

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I don't think buying up portfolios falls under "domain warehousing", as those domains were privately owned and not taken over at the time of expiry.

Having attended many ICANN meetings and being in a number of working groups, I personally never really got the impression that ICANN had the backs of the registrars.

FM said:

I don't think buying up portfolios falls under "domain warehousing", as those domains were privately owned and not taken over at the time of expiry.

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I guess the fact that the term is not explicitly defined is convenient for the registry and registrars (or is it actually defined somewhere??).

The logical conclusion to a layperson is that the term "domain warehousing" would mean to own & hold a large inventory of domains for resale purposes. I'm not sure how any other definition could be explained. So from that perspective, how they get the inventory is irrelevant, they are still "warehousing".

However, the specific act of a registrar keeping a customer's expired domains for themselves is an exceptionally egregious form of warehousing - cutting out the free market entirely. I see it as the #1 and most egregious way of acquiring domains for a registrar and I understand that is specifically what you are referring to. Is that the only definition that ICANN or CIRA were referring to when that terminology was originally introduced? It seems to me the simple fact that a registrar would be allowed to warehouse domains at all still seems like a conflict of interest - I have to believe they thought so too. If the intent was to ONLY single out the act of keeping expired domains, I'm pretty sure they could have come up with a more descriptive term, or to simply spell out that single excluded method of acquiring domains. But no, they chose to use the term "warehousing" which can and should be interpreted much more broadly, don't you think? Seriously, it would have been so simple to say "When a registrant chooses not to renew a domain, the registrar of record MUST release that domain through the standard drop process and within the domain life-cycle timeline, with no exceptions." One and done. No ambiguity. But that's not what they did. So I'm not sure I believe "Warehousing" was originally intended to take on ONLY that one meaning.

One positive, but rarely discussed, aspect of a registrar holding onto to some of its customers' expired domains is that if one of those customers comes back to the registrar months or years later, and can present a valid explanation for why they let the domain registration lapse, the registrar can (if it has a registrant-friendly code of conduct, which some do) hand that domain over to the former registrant. That is not something the typical domainer would do, although there are some domainers that would be generous in that fashion.

When I worked at a major registrar overseeing that registrar's expiry stream (and various domain portfolios), we helped hundreds of people (including famously an injured US soldier who awoke from a coma years after his precious domain had expired) to get their domains restored to them *precisely* because we as the registrar had picked that domain out of the expiry stream.

So IMHO "warehousing" cuts both ways, and it depends on how the specific registrar handles the matter. Some registrars are very callous and mercenary, and some are not. I was proud to work for one that was very registrant-friendly.

P.S. That registrar I am speaking about no longer picks up domains from its expiry stream; they all flow to a popular auction platform.