Since it seems no one wants to address this issue, I guess I have the duty of bringing it into the light. From my experience with .TV it seems there is no way to drop catch expiring .TV domains except from godaddy at TDNAM. I have seen lots of discussion about the recent Online.tv drops. But no one is talking about the obvious DROP CATCHING that is occuring. There is one way to DROP CATCH expiring domains. I have caught on to a scheme that involves a .TV registrar. While I truely do not know if it is illegal, it seems fairly unscrupulous and dubious.
There are all kinds of problems resulting from the Online.tv $10 drops, CCD and several others had their premium domains reclaimed (which is a whole other discussion) and there will be lawsuits etc. One of the overlooked questions of this whole scenario was "How did these folks register these names prior to ENOM reclaiming these names from the pool? They were able to swipe them up the instant they became available, even before the whois registry shows available to consumers. One such entity was pointed out by member wmldi on their post in this thread:
As pointed out in the above thread, when the online.tv drops first happened, a Taiwanese person/persons registered a massive amount of them for $10 via this registrar
This site was only established in APRIL. Which is owned by Taiwanese person... also a member here. Their name is on the whois for this registrar and they have 2 names up for sale on the site which they posted about on May1st here, So it was easy to track back.
I have found that this person/persons associated with the registrar in Taiwan are able get the Drop on expiring premiums and non premiums alike. For over a month I had been following the expiration of
fundraiser.tv - an expired Non Premium
I have been checking for the last two weeks, 5-10 times a day for fundraiser.tv. Even the morning of its new registration I checked twice and it was not registered or available yet, and then POOF there it is, registered....It was registered within hours, by the same Taiwanese person/persons that caught alot of online.tv's drops. Again I must ask; How are these same Taiwanese people able to register expiring names via this same registrar lookingfor.tv that was only recently established?
It does not take a genius to realize they are somehow using their ability as a registrar to drop catch every single good name. Its obvious this is the only reason they established the registrar. It can't be ethical, and I can't believe that Demand media nor verisign would be ok with this.
Do any other members know about this?
I am not very happy about this. It changes the .TV playing field dramatically. From now on the only way to get a good .TV will to buy in the aftermarket or own your own registrar.
i tried many time to catch some tv domains but there is no automatic way for this.
I thought this is general but it seems Taiwan guys are one step ahead.
Undoubtedly, this person is regarded as a brilliant business person.
Money talks . . .you know what walks. So I guess we should quit cryin and know our role.
By the way, I got a feelin that our domain names we have will be priced mucho higher when reregistration occurs so brilliant businessmen like Mr Taiwan will be able to buy them. Thus may end our hopes of .tv extension for the simple but honest entrepreneur. The lack of a response fron the powers that be seem to affirm this.
If this is correct then this means we are not on a level playingfield!! Are these guy's cherry picking dropping domains for really sweet prices knowing that they are about to be made Premium?? I think that if this is the case then something has to be done about it. There really should be a recognised drop catching service such as Snapnames where everyone who is interested has a fair crack of the whip.
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Scheduled for auction:>>> DOMAIN.TV
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OK So it takes $76,500 to start a registrar. A $6,500 cash investment up front.
Don't you think it is strange that a NP member would spend minimum $6,500 to become a .TV registrar and not post once about it in the .TV forum? Or even in all of Namepros? Not to mention the timing...
I really want to know:
What are your abilities as a .TV registrar?
Can you monitor dropping names?
If so, Do you just get a list?
Are they Backordering them via their own registrar?
If the answer to any of the above questions is yes; Then is there some sort of legal agreement between DM and the registrar that allows or disallows this activity?
It seems that there are alot of unanswered questions out there. I have no idea if its legal or not but it is happening.
I am going to reserve judgement until I can get more answers.
__________________ Maine.TVWrestle.TV Farts.TVMINDWRECKER.TV
If Dot Com is King then Dot TV will be the Queen, and I would rather be caught making out with the Queen...
Im not sure what the link is to. I already posted that it is not a premium name. Anyhow it does not matter weather they are a reseller or their on registrar they are exploiting it somehow.
I subscribe to business 2.0 and read this 2 months ago. It still does not change the fact that the are able to get all of the expiring names...
Great inquiry, interesting and courageous analysis DomainAcrobat. This is just amazing . If this is PROVEN I wouldn't talk about "brilliant businessmen" but simply and purely about "mafia". What's the next step ? Kidnap domain owners ? Lol, I remember one of the folks claiming that he catched the drops in 'good faith'..... by the way I can't find the corresponding thread, is it just me or is it deleted ?
The majority* of online.tv dropped names were clearly labelled as premiums:
3-4 weeks ago, we could verify the super discounted premium price of 10$
I remember it very well and asked myself if eNom would correct the price before the drop or if somebody would reg them at this price in good faith
Congrats to the 2 members of this board who tried to reg a massive amount of dropped premium .tvs at a ridiculous low price despite the fact that they knew exactly the "30 days thing" in eNom's TOS...
Now, to know if they catched them manually or automatically... This is another question for which I don't have the answer...
*: non-premium exceptions: travels.tv, exhibition(s).tv, tradefairs.tv which were "catched" end of last week.
DomainAcrobat and other interested members, I do not believe anything strange is going on with the tv drops. From my observations newly dropped names are available on a first come first serve basis. I was one of the few who grabbed a couple of the online.tv drops at $10 (and had them taken away the next day). The trick is to be trying to reg a name at the right time (e.g. as soon as its released into the wild). There are enough of us name hunters tracking pending deletes that it’s a matter of perfect timing. Furthermore, the whois database does not get updated until afterwards – I think that Whois updates a couple times a day, and usually not on weekends – but that’s just an observation, perhaps someone knows a specific schedule? Anyone?
As a result if a name is re-released over the weekend, nobody (other than the person who regged it – or someone who was a few moments late) will know until Monday morning. This was clearly the case on the big online.tv drop which happened on a Sunday. I was checking every 30 minutes. When I saw a name available I started regging – some were already gone, many showed available but when I tried to reg I received a message to the effect: “name no longer available – payment being processed”. So my timing was off by a few minutes and thus I only got a couple names –pulled in the end anyways. It could be that somebody has written a program to ping the enom server every 5 seconds for perfect timing???
But my recent experience last week suggests otherwise and confirms my above suspicions. Last week there were a group of 20+ names (non-premos) which dropped – I managed to get a few (don’t ask for a month) when I checked later who may have beat me on the others I saw a pretty even distribution of people (infamous Taiwan based: 5 names; Beijing based #1: 4 names; Beijing based #2: 3 names; Hong Kong based: 3 names; and a few others with 1 each.) Conclusion – enom drops are equally available to all on a level playing field but you have to get the timing just right. And if you get one – click the purchase button as fast as you can! Good luck to all – another conclusion might be its a lot cheaper to buy a name for low xxx in the aftermarket than spending the dedicated hours trying to catch a falling knife. And lastly, the Asian based players are very competitive.
The link was to show confirmation that the name is not a premium, and would not have been taken back by DM/Verisign...
The issue of them being a Registrar came up - I was dispelling that. They simply have an enom reseller account (BTW reseller price on .tv is $21.99, so @ $45.00 is just a little overpriced...)
"exploiting"??????????????? Because he/she/they had more open browsers, more people, or better timing than you to register a non-premium name that was dropped? No offense Marlowe, but you're way over the top on this.
Even if they ran a script to register dropped names released back to the registry, that practice has been going on since day one. Why is this any different? The only difference is that there is no snapnames type comapny that has made exclusive deals with registrars for .tv names that hold ALL until confirmed there is no traffic, then released to the registry. Had DM/Verisign felt it was a "Premium" (like "cumbubbles" ), they would have taken that back and re-priced as well. They didn't, so Free-For-All.
A) the link is useless I already posted that it is not a PREMIUM. This is not even the issue and completely irrelevant. I did not say anything about DM reclaiming non premium names from anyone. I am trying to establish a pattern of the same person/persons registering EXPIRING names, premium and non premium the moment they become avaiable, everythime it is from this site Lookingfor.tv...
B)Somone else said they were a registrar in another thread, so I assumed they were correct. Then equity posted the requirements for being a registrar, so I assumed equity thought they were a registrar too. Wether or not they are a reseller or a registrar is irrelevant anyway.
C) No one has more open browsers than me. I run a 24 inch monitor that can accomodate 20 open windows. 2 enom.tv browsers, 1 enomcentral.com browser, 2 godaddy browers, 1 yahoo browser,1 networksolutions browser, 2 google, 1 keyword search window and 2 open windows for while checking .actual sites. No one is more diligent when checking and searching for names. No one here clicks faster than me, believe me. If I had wanted, I could have played video games proffesionally. I was ranked # 4 in the world several times for 2 different non turn based real time strategy games. I can keep track of more broswers than most folks I know. No one clicks the button faster. No offense, but I am not way over the top on this Westblock.
D) So in your opinion, you chalk up the fact that the same Taiwanese person/persons register a massive amount of Online.tv drops and a whole bunch of great non premiums the moment the they become available via the same site to coincidence and good timing? LOL! That is a pretty near sided aprouch. I am not a conspiracy theorist by any means. I coud post name after name with whois after whois, but I don't play like that. There is a well established pattern that these folks are able to register expiring name after name.
E) I always said it could be tottally legal and I want more answers. If it is a script, how do you get past the tiny jpeg with the numbers on it? You have to manually type in the number by hand. If it is a script, can you use a normal script at enom.tv. enom.com or enomcentral.com? I am not the most knowledgable when it comes to scripts, but I cant imagine you can lawfully run one of these scripts and have a reseller/restrar setup with Demand Media and Verisign.
IMO it looks like a calculated attempt to grab the online.tv drops, plus whatever else expires. Anyhow I did not mean to upset anyone or even jump to conclusions without good reason. I do not feel I am way off base for anything I have posted. I have always left the door open by saying I want to wait for more answers until I pass judgment. It just looks extrememly fishy.
. If this is PROVEN I wouldn't talk about "brilliant businessmen" but simply and purely about "mafia". What's the next step ? Kidnap domain owners ? Lol, I remember one of the folks claiming that he catched the drops in 'good faith'..... by the way I can't find the corresponding thread, is it just me or is it deleted ?
), they would have taken that back and re-priced as well. They didn't, so Free-For-All.
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LOL. In my experience everyone at this forum has been say