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information Brent Oxley Loses Access to Create.com, Plus Millions of Dollars Worth of His Domains

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Brent Oxley, the founder of HostGator, has been accruing a portfolio of ultra-premium domain names since he sold his hosting company for close to $300 million in 2013.

With purchases such as Give.com for $500,000, Broker.com for $375,000, and Texas.com for $1,007,500, Oxley has spent millions of dollars over the past few years accumulating this collection. According to his website, the portfolio is worth more than $25 million.

Oxley has now, however, lost access to a proportion of his portfolio

Read the full report on my blog
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
The India courts have no jurisdiction over Brent.
The problem here is that Godaddy has put themselves
in a position where the India courts have jurisdiction
over Godaddy. And that means that the Indian courts
have jurisdiction over anyone who has a domain name
registered with Godaddy. And if Godaddy has a
presence in China, so do corrupt Chinese courts.

Domainers should not be subject to the orders
of biased and corrupt courts systems. They should only
be subject the the courts in the countries where they reside.
If the India court orders Godaddy to transfer Brent's
domain names to Puneet, Godaddy will do it.

This whole situation is 100% the fault of Godaddy!
As it seems, godaddy is active in 53 countries, so it seems like anybody from any of these countries can do the same...the idea is that they should wait for a court order, like any other normal company. I could do the same from my country, without even paying that $11 and keep going for years without any real case, just with a complain.This case will open the doors to lots of abuses, the guys with the appraisal scams will not bother anymore with appraisals, they will just fill lots of complains and blackmail everybody.
 
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This entire thing is very troubling on many fronts.

Brad


I agree, but same time I’m also wondering how Brent managed to get himself involved with a guy like this for it to even happen :-/

Brent as made it in life (money wise), spent millions creating one of the most impressive domain portfolios I've seen, how has he got himself involved with a 2-bit domain broker? There must have been some kind of communication prior, which is fine, but 'why' was there communication? He shouldn't have given this person time of day.

Portfolio like that, it's like communicating with a small time car tradesman on your 6 and 7 figure supercars.
 
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I agree, but same time I’m also wondering how Brent managed to get himself involved with a guy like this for it to even happen :-/

Brent as made it in life (money wise), spent millions creating one of the most impressive domain portfolios I've seen, how has he got himself involved with a 2-bit domain broker? There must have been some kind of communication prior, which is fine, but 'why' was there communication? He shouldn't have given this person time of day.

Portfolio like that, it's like communicating with a small time car tradesman on your 6 and 7 figures supercars.


There is some backstory, which we don’t know yet.
 
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There is some backstory, which we don’t know yet.
No matter what's the backstory, doesn't matter. The only thing is that there is no court order, everything else is just a story. Without the court order godaddy doesn't have any right or obligation to do anything. The backstory could be that there was so history between Brent and godaddy( or godaddy employees) but that's just supposition and we will need more popcorn for that
 
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No matter what's the backstory, doesn't matter. The only thing is that there is no court order, everything else is just a story. Without the court order godaddy doesn't have any right or obligation to do anything. The backstory could be that there was so history between Brent and godaddy( or godaddy employees) but that's just supposition and we will need more popcorn for that


I don't agree with GD locking the DNs.

The backstory seems to be between Oxley and the broker, of which full details are not yet in public domain.
 
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Had the domains that I bought before I launched Create been with Namecheap or Epik, this would never have happened!

It is ridiculous this is happening to you and I hope things work out in your favor quickly. This should be a lesson to all of us and thanks for posting details for us to see.
 
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/\

This is going to be a PR disaster for GD.
 
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If Godaddy refuses to stand down, I believe Brent should pursue a legal path which serves to discover all communications at Godaddy related to policy and practices related to impairing 2A enthusiasts.
Thank you very much sir for giving a constructive opinion.
 
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It's enough that I have transferred all of my domains that were at GD to another registrar. Interestingly, all transfers completed except 6 valuable domains. Still pending transfer. I called GD and was told that there was no problem. I am anxiously waiting for those last 6 to complete.

Personally, my decision is not only based on this incident. There have been other instances of GD taking action to my detriment and not supporting me even after a probably 10+ year relationship.

I feel very good working with my new registrar of choice. No more GD for me. Not now, not ever again.
 
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It takes GoDaddy 20 years to create a BIN page. Afternic posts billions in share price adjustment value over near a decade for Afternic, but can't even change the home page domains for seven years. As they underhandedly target the customers of other registrars at every point of interaction and work to undermine relationships with the intent to take it all. They have a history of discrimination, deplatform organizations for what look like political motivations, and they treat their employees, customers, partners, and relationships like absolute dirt. This is even before the multitude of data breeches, security compromises, domain hacks, stolen domains, deceptive practices, and employee attacks.

https://domainnamewire.com/2021/02/22/godaddys-afternic-had-security-hole/

https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/24/22199406/godaddy-wins-2020-stupidity-award

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/11...-attacks-on-multiple-cryptocurrency-services/

https://www.zdnet.com/article/aws-error-exposed-godaddy-server-secrets/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveyw...llion-customers-need-to-know/?sh=37b1d0f01daa

https://www.cpomagazine.com/cyber-s...ansferring-ownership-of-cryptocurrency-sites/

https://thefederalist.com/2021/01/1...-kicked-off-the-internet-without-explanation/


What will it honestly take? This company is not your friend. They are a weaponized arm of BigTech with the objective of single source domain control as a monopoly for content removal for a warped version of future utopia that will not favor humanity. Their depravity can be measured by a corporate lifetime of bad choices, arrogance, and zero accountability because they believe in their hearts they are beyond touch. #truth
 
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@Intelliname This is clearly an attack from one registrar to the other. Let's not do this. Your company isn't telling the #truth about your alternative .truth TLD, and more. Fix this first, before participating in this thread?

I won't disagree w/ some of your facts, btw.
 
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I think so too. For convenience, media will combine this story about the market leader with juicy details about the domain aftermarket in general. A "greedy ecosystem" as seen by many actors, each with their own interests. ICA to the rescue.

https://www.circleid.com/posts/20210218-busting-domain-name-secondary-market-myths/

We are mostly looking at this from the point of view of traders who see domains as mobile, saleable assets.

If what GD says turned out to be true, that you can change DNS on a locked/frozen domain, the main effect on an enduser here would be that they can't move the domain to another registrar and can't change the registrant details, ie ownership. The services depending on the domain would still function. And in fact if GD in general don't notify the registrant that the domain is locked/frozen, the end-user registrant may never know. And what if they die and executors or business partners want to deal with the domain and change registrant? Again, the domain presumably goes to auction to the benefit of Godaddy.

If the domain owner can't change DNS and aren't using Cloudflare or similar, then their website keeps functioning as long as they keep paying the hosting bills and the host doesn't boot them. They just can't change hosting company.

This makes me wonder how often this happens behind the scenes,
especially if one effect of it is to prevent people leaving GoDaddy hosting, which must be far more lucrative than a few pricey renewal fees on a handful of enduser domains the user might hold.

For all I know there is a freelancer site where you can hire complainants to tie up people's businesses.
 
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@Intelliname This is clearly an attack from one registrar to the other. Let's not do this. Your company isn't telling the #truth about your alternative .truth TLD, and more. Fix this first, before participating in this thread?

I won't disagree w/ some of your facts, btw.

I think Intelliname was commenting in a private capacity. He was a NP member and industry observer long before he joined Epik. He even consulted for Godaddy in the past and had 10,000 domains there until recently. I am pretty sure he is observing this as an industry stakeholder, raising concerns.

Godaddy should have stood down on this issue on Friday night. It is insanity to have allowed this to become the top thread on NamePros for the month. There is no defense. The fact that guys like Brad Mugford, Grilled, or SilentPartner condemn the action is telling.

If registrars can simply seize domains, and hide behind ToS that allows them to do it, then the industry has a problem. There was some prior incident with Pheenix where domains went missing, and that was pretty much the end of Pheenix as a registrar where anyone renews domains.

Aman can still still claim that this was done without his awareness. I sent him a private note on Friday night imploring him to take action. I was hoping that I would wake up to find out that the matter was solved. Unfortunately, that is not the case and that is a very sad day for the industry.
 
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@Intelliname This is clearly an attack from one registrar to the other. Let's not do this.

I was a user here long before I agreed to help Epik do some videos, lift up the industry with positive messages and value statements about smart domains, and publish inspirational videos through the pandemic to ensure optimism and hope for the future. I've also just moved 10,000 domains from GoDaddy due to the countless technical, security and negligent actions I've personally witnessed over these past several years. Unbelievable and horrific acts of what appeared to be intentional and targeted service marginalization, before even factoring what I could testify to in their actions against Epik and others. Accusing Epik of being dishonest for their creation of an alt TLD for the future, given the dozens of organizations and millions already participating in the decentralized domain space is just bad form. As is believing you have any right or capacity to inform others what their intentions are through illogical assumption. You should research the alt TLD space, VPN's, handshake and decentralized domains.
 
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@Intelliname You have some good points and I do appreciate what you're doing, but posting this with your "Epik.com Staff" badge is not so smart. Your company is in a business conflict with Godaddy as well.

With regard to the .truth TLD. You obviously have not been following several threads on this forum, that's okay. Epik is stating that Google and other search engines will rank your website when you're using the .truth TLD from Epik. I don't say I'm pro or con Alternative TLDs, I'm just saying that you^WEpik is incorrectly portraying the benefits of this .truth TLD #truth #thanks.
 
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I was a user here long before I agreed to help Epik do some videos, lift up the industry with positive messages and value statements about smart domains, and publish inspirational videos through the pandemic to ensure optimism and hope for the future. I've also just moved 10,000 domains from GoDaddy due to the countless technical, security and negligent actions I've personally witnessed over these past several years. Unbelievable and horrific acts of what appeared to be intentional and targeted service marginalization, before even factoring what I could testify to in their actions against Epik and others. Accusing Epik of being dishonest for their creation of an alt TLD for the future, given the dozens of organizations and millions already participating in the decentralized domain space is just bad form. As is believing you have any right or capacity to inform others what their intentions are through illogical assumption. You should research the alt TLD space, VPN's, handshake and decentralized domains.
You could be a long time member here, but for some particular reasons you are not the most liked member here and working with epik and tying to ad more fuel on fire will not do any good, it will just derail the thread and you will do a favor to godaddy, so in my opinion you should let godaddy deal with this issue. I'm sure that even dynadot or namesilo representatives were reading this thread but they made a good choice not to get involved, it will just make it as a revenge/competition thread..let godaddy deal with their PR issues, they are doing it great and you can handle epik PR issues.
 
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When it comes to locking the domains why isn’t there a uniform standard across the Industry and why has ICANN left this up to the individual Registrars to have all kinds of different policies in their TOS in regards to Registrants’ Rights.

In my opinion there should be a uniform policy in regards to Registrants’ Rights that is followed by all Registry and Registrars especially when it comes to locking the domains.

IMO
 
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you are not the most liked member here

I see. I am sorry if the collection of links and facts presented is getting in the way of your popularity contest. I didn't realize you had decided I was unworthy to contribute. It is concerning to see how many have been empowered to let others know they simply should have no voice. In fact, there may even be a direct correlation between unchecked monopoly growth, and the ability for companies like GoDaddy to target and harm others with no accountability because of it. Thank you for your encouraging words boker.
 
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When it comes to locking the domains why isn’t there a uniform standard across the Industry and why has ICANN left this up to the individual Registrars to have all kinds of different policies in their TOS in regards to Registrants’ Rights.

In my opinion there should be a uniform policy in regards to Registrants’ Rights that is followed by all Registry and Registrars especially when it comes to locking the domains.

IMO
I wonder if Icann or verisign doesn't have any power to change the godaddy decision. The cctld from my country, the guys running it can force a registrar to unlock a domain or allow transfer, it happened a couple of times in my case, so it should be the same regarding .com
 
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I think Intelliname was commenting in a private capacity. He was a NP member and industry observer long before he joined Epik. He even consulted for Godaddy in the past and had 10,000 domains there until recently. I am pretty sure he is observing this as an industry stakeholder, raising concerns.

Godaddy should have stood down on this issue on Friday night. It is insanity to have allowed this to become the top thread on NamePros for the month. There is no defense. The fact that guys like Brad Mugford, Grilled, or SilentPartner condemn the action is telling.

If registrars can simply seize domains, and hide behind ToS that allows them to do it, then the industry has a problem. There was some prior incident with Pheenix where domains went missing, and that was pretty much the end of Pheenix as a registrar where anyone renews domains.

Aman can still still claim that this was done without his awareness. I sent him a private note on Friday night imploring him to take action. I was hoping that I would wake up to find out that the matter was solved. Unfortunately, that is not the case and that is a very sad day for the industry.

Thanks. See my answer to @Intelliname as well.

You may also appreciate that I have been very critical about Godaddy in this thread, as well.

"Commenting in a private capacity" will not work here, I'm afraid.
 
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I see. I am sorry if the collection of links and facts presented is getting in the way of your popularity contest. I didn't realize you had decided I was unworthy to contribute. It is concerning to see how many have been empowered to let others know they simply should have no voice. In fact, there may even be a direct correlation between unchecked monopoly growth, and the ability for companies like GoDaddy to target and harm others with no accountability because of it. Thank you for your encouraging words boker.
It's not a popularity contest, but by saying to much, everybody will see it as an attack from competition and what godaddy does will be seen less important and it will be to bad to help them at this stage. You can say whatever you want, this is just my opinion.
 
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What will it honestly take? This company is not your friend. They are a weaponized arm of BigTech with the objective of single source domain control as a monopoly for content removal for a warped version of future utopia that will not favor humanity. Their depravity can be measured by a corporate lifetime of bad choices, arrogance, and zero accountability because they believe in their hearts they are beyond touch. #truth

The psychological warfare division called; they want their dictionary back. Citing a concern with continually subjecting netizens to the crossfire of this ever-growingly uncivil persistent corporate feud, that hints at misinformation, distorted political undertones, and worst of all excessively divisive rhetoric.

Simply put, if Epik can out-tech / out-policy Godaddy and other leading registrars such as Dynadot and NameCheap, then Epik will become the new market leader. All of this warped utopia, lifetime of bad choices, and #truth rhetoric has too much of a Mike Lindell (marketer) feel, and not enough of a Steve Wozniak (innovating developer) feel. I mean, we're talking domains here, not pillows!

@Intelliname This is clearly an attack from one registrar to the other. Let's not do this.

Amen! 🙏
 
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