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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.
I respect Paul Nicks for responding, but I don't think it really answered the many questions.

Is there even an actual court order to lock these domains, or is this just some arbitrary decision by GoDaddy?

Even if there is a court order, I am confused why an India court even has any standing in the first place. GoDaddy, Brent Oxley, and Verisign are all US based as far as I can tell.

Can someone go to court in any random country or court, and with out without a court order, produce the same outcome?

Was the domain Create.com even part of the dispute? If not, why is that locked?

This seems like a business dispute. It seems like GoDaddy has clearly crossed an acceptable line in locking these domains IMO, at least with the information I have seen.

This is like opening up Pandora's Box.

Brad
Brad, you are lucky that you are a great guy, I could demand that all your domains are mine and if I fill the complaint in my country, we have like 5 courts to go through, up to the high court, even if I don't have a real case, so I could get your domains locked for up to ten years, according to godaddy. That's absurd. For these reasons, even if you will have assets in my country, no court will seize them, until the final high court appearance, so that nobody can abuse the system. Looks like godaddy is giving hopes to crocks that they could blackmail anybody now. What will happen if after 6 years of filling a complaint and loosing because there is no case, I will ask my brother to fill one for 11$, than my cousin and so on, until we die? According to godaddy, they could keep all your domains locked all your life, it's like a Kafka story, everything goes from absurd to even more absurd. Next time when I don't receive in time my stuff ordered from amazon, I will ask godaddy to lock amazon until I'm happy.
 
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You are right. Legitimately He has to file a case to US court not sure How GoDaddy is even entertaining the case. Domain is not Registered by an Indian company, Registrar is not an Indian company, Registry is not an Indian entity. Still GoDaddy is locking these domains. Will GoDaddy lock Godaddy.com if someone in some third world country file a case in local court that they have the right on this domain name? I am sure it can happen anytime with my domains because they all were previously owned by someone although it was Godaddy who sold it to me on premium. This is a SUPER URGENT MATTER which every domainer need to look into, and a hopeless situation for everyone.
It's not about third world, it's about all countries, even if you are in Canada, Switzerland, Australia and so on, there is no way to seize assets from somebody owned in another country. And even if you do, it has to go through local courts and again, only a court can seize assets, not godaddy.
 
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The registrar is based in the US.
The registry is based in the US.
The registrant is based in the US.

It is absurd that an Indian court has any standing in this case in my view.

Brad
But the indian court has no standing in this case, they have just accepted the compaint, they need to rule if it's true or not and than go further and notify US court and these can take years and years ,godaddy has replaced all these courts and made it in seconds, they want to show to local market(1.3 billion possible customers) how fast and obedient they can be.
 
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But the indian court has no standing in this case, they have just accepted the compaint, they need to rule if it's true or not and than go further and notify US court and these can take years and years ,godaddy has replaced all these courts and made it in seconds, they want to show to local market(1.3 billion possible customers) how fast and obedient they can be.

That is what makes it even more troubling. It opens up a can of worms.

It is completely unacceptable unless there is far more to this story, which it doesn't seem like there is at this point.

Brad
 
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That is what makes it even more troubling. It opens up a can of worms.

It is completely unacceptable unless there is far more to this story, which it doesn't seem like there is at this point.

Brad
What's even more unacceptable, is that godaddy ignored all the defendant emails and requests. Even network solutions and 1&1 will replay late, but eventually they will reply. Looks like godaddy has chosen to ignore everything hopping for the best and that is in this case, a premium customer. What will happen if somebody like me will be in Brent's case, they will send me to my roots and auction my domains in less than 24 hours....
 
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We all know that India is an important country for Godaddy for growing its business. I sincerely hope that foreign ambitions do not take precedence or harm the rights of customers in other countries.

Reading this thread on namePros, I am struggling taking a stand that Godaddy is fighting for their clients and their rights.

Here's a news item from 2018*

Moving forward, we are committed to contribute significantly to our country's Digital India initiative. We expect one-third of Indian small businesses to be online by 2022, and we aspire for GoDaddy to play a major role in helping these businesses bring their ideas online," Nikhil Arora, Vice President and Managing Director, India, GoDaddy, said in a statement.

*Source: https://tech.hindustantimes.com/tec...rs-in-india-story-mwzT80VIJ4mjKSLhAuXeZO.html

As someone closely involved in Internet infrastructure matters, I'm particularly worried about trust that has been given to Godaddy for providing services in the DNS B-Root, and other critical DNS infrastructure services.

https://www.godaddy.com/engineering/2020/01/27/b-root/

Godaddy, I recommend taking a broader look at this case than just ticking some things off.

@Paul Nicks @Joe Styler
 
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We expect one-third of Indian small businesses to be online by 2022, and we aspire for GoDaddy to play a major role in helping these businesses bring their ideas online," Nikhil Arora, Vice President and Managing Director, India, GoDaddy, said in a statement.

Guess that's part of the issue.

But GoDaddy India should be an entirely different legal entity right? It's not like if you have a presence in another country all of your global businesses obligations fall under local law.

@create.com

I'm sure you have a good legal team, probably people specialising in these kind of assets given your history of acquisitions but it might make sense to reach out to @jberryhill .
 
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I'm particularly worried about trust that has been given to Godaddy for providing services in the DNS B-Root, and other critical DNS infrastructure services

Same here. Very troubling.
 
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Look at the threats being made towards Brent and his family. This stuff is crazy.
It does not surprise me, the person made similar threats on NamePros before mods took action.

More information about threats made to others - https://www.namepros.com/threads/ba...e-is-no-room-for-threats-on-namepros.1186257/

I really can't believe GoDaddy's actions on this.


Upon contacting Oxley for comment, he provided me with a screenshot of an Escrow.com transaction purportedly created by Agarwal.

In the transaction (#7813820), titled “Mutual settlement of fight,” Agarwal offers to withdraw his case against Oxley and allow the registrar to unlock Oxley’s domain names.

In exchange for this, Agarwal is asking for $5 million, according to the screenshot provided.

Oxley also sent screenshots of hundreds of emails and instant messages allegedly sent by Agarwal to Oxley.

In one string of 99 messages allegedly sent by Agarwal, numerous threats are made to Oxley, including “Ur [sic] ranch will burn one day,” “Ur [sic] car will catch fire,” “I will also take help from black magic,” and “I will pray to devil god to fulfill it.”

In another string, messages include “Ur [sic] children will pay for ur [sic] bad karma,” “All ur [sic] money will be no use to them,” and “U [sic] will cry blood tears.”
 
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GoDaddy is simply enabling the actions of this person who is clearly acting in bad faith.

This thread is a real eye opener -

https://www.namepros.com/threads/ba...e-is-no-room-for-threats-on-namepros.1186257/

He was involved in multiple cases of threatening people. I had an issue at the time, and I still have an issue now with NamePros lack of action. There were at least (3) cases I know of where physical violence (including death) was threatened.

If threatening people with physical violence multiple times is not cause for a ban, what is?

At the time I posted the following -

I can't even believe this is serious. What the hell has happened to NamePros?

We have people making threats for at least the second time.
Oh no, an infraction was issued.

The moderation, or lack of I should say, has lead us to this place.
This should not be tolerated, never mind for a second time.

Brad
 
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Look at some of the comments on the original blog post from prominent members of the community.

This is going to be a disaster for GoDaddy if they don't resolve this soon.

It is really hard to overstate how important this is to domain investors, and just domain owners in general.

David J Castello
7 hours ago

Reply to Brent
This just put the nail in the coffin for us ever registering anything on GoDaddy.com



James Booth
1 day ago

This is an absolute joke! The fact someone can do something like this for $11 is beyond ridiculous. Brent is one of the most honest, straight shooting guys out there. Not once had any issues. He has benefited this industry massively and I find it disgusting he has to go through this with threats to him and his family while someone tries to extort him. This POS belongs in jail!


John Berryhill
14 hours ago

Reply to Matts
What if you don’t get your merchandise from Amazon.com? Does the domain name get locked? No. There are all sorts of commercial disputes which are brought and adjudicated without tangentially-involved domain names being locked.


Francois
1 day ago

Oxley discovered this lawsuit when I sold him encrypt.com for cash + domains one year ago with the help of Michael Gargiulo of VPN.com. Brent was unable to push me 2 domains… That’s when he called GoDaddy.com to learn about a claim from an unknown guy in India who apparently had filed a frivolous lawsuit on a large collection of his premium domains. It was incredible that GoDaddy locked all these domains overnight without even inform the owner. This is a scary story that I thought will be resolved quickly but apparently continues. It’s terrible!!!

Also of important note is Michael Gargiulo @VPN.com recent comment HERE.

...about 25 of Brent’s names were locked including several we previously brokered, CIA.com and Detect.com. We found this highly suspicious because each of these transactions were handled through Escrow.com, who verified the identity of the buyer, seller, and broker accounts…none of which were Puneet.

Furthermore, Viaje.com was brokered through Uniregistry to Brent’s ownership. How could Puneet have been involved with a Uniregistry deal?

To make this an even bigger debacle, Puneet’s entire litigation and evidence were served to Brent and our team.. in Hindi. We had to have the documents legally translated before discussions with GoDaddy could be had. This took weeks to authenticate.

Puneet’s claims revolved around Brent owing him money for domain brokerage work but never produced any English documents or contracts that point out such a breach. This made clear to GoDaddy that no agreement actually existed, or at the very least the claim is unsubstantiated.

It very much appears that Puneet filed this litigation because he knew GoDaddy would lock the names. He was aware of how their policy would react to his hostage litigation.

Of course, we wanted to get this resolved amicably with GoDaddy and most preferably without litigation against them. I spoke to GoDaddy CEO Aman Bhutani, Paul Nicks and... read the full comment on JamesNames.com
 
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Also of important note is Michael Gargiulo @VPN.com recent comment HERE.

The more that comes out the worse this looks for GoDaddy.

This is creating an absurd precedent. It is creating a system that can be easily gamed and abused.

If this can happen to Brent, what chance does any other domain investor or even domain owner have in fighting this type of complete nonsense?

Brad
 
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Here is an imaginary scenario:

Person C finds a buyer called person B who is willing to pay 120k for a domain name that person A is asking 100k for.

Person A and person B engage in a escrow transaction and the domain changes hands between them for 120k

Although person C does not have a contract with either person A or person B and is not mentioned in the escrow transaction anywhere, but person C now believes (rightly or wrongly) that he is owed 20k

Were person A and person B both fully aware of what person C was doing here and were they okay with it, or was it done without the knowledge of one of the parties to this domain transaction, perhaps that’s what makes all the difference in such cases.

IMO
 
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Firstly, you (Brent Oxley) or in fact anybody here doesn't know if this person's name is "Puneet Agarwal" for real or not. Nobody knows if the address he used to file the petition does exist or not. Although he shows himself as Indian, but seriously he could be sitting comfortably in some other country and using his contacts here to file the petitions.

Maybe this is his full-time job to hunt entrepreneurs in different niches, learn about their businesses and circles, get in touch with them, exchange some communication and sue them to extort money? Perhaps just a personal opinion of what I just read here about and the past accusations to some other domainer too.

Court cases here goes on and on for many years. A court proceeding missed by you or by him will again make the clock reset. This Tom and Jerry case will go on forever until you budge to his wishes and this will make him more of a confident and successful con-man.

But if you are honest and have proper proofs of his no involvement in any of your businesses, there should be no reason to bow down to him or his improper demands.

I am a no legal expert and doesn't even have a slightest knowledge of any legal proceedings, but again keeping the fact that you are being honest to your business and dealings with him, you can file an FIR against him in some Indian Police Station for him threatening, abusing you and your family (just in case he really did that, I am not asking to falsely accuse him).

This should speed things up. Obviously, they will first track him down, will have all his background and the Police will guide you then to the proper court procedures. His previous scams and similar activities (if he committed any) will help you prove your point and get justice served at a faster pace.

Let the truth prevail...!
 
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Also back to the topic at hand.. GoDaddy you have really let yourselves down here big time. Awful, just awful.
 
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But if you are honest and have proper proofs of his no involvement in any of your businesses, there should be no reason to bow down to him or his improper demands

Should be the other way around. Let him come with proof. If there is none, don't lock any domains to begin with.

Innocent untill proven guilty.
 
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Should be the other way around. Let him come with proof. If there is none, don't lock any domains to begin with.

Innocent untill proven guilty.
Even if he has proof, godaddy can't act as a judge, jury and other law enforcement agency. All these steps should be made by proper institutions and agencies, exactly for this reason, to make sure that nobody is abusing the system. Godaddy can't guess what will happen at the end of the court appearance. Based on godaddy actions, they could even delete these domains and put them up to auctions, just because somebody filled a complain and make a few millions from the auctions, before any court order will be issued, this is wrong at so many levels.
 
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Look at the threats being made towards Brent and his family. This stuff is crazy.
It does not surprise me, the person made similar threats on NamePros before mods took action.

More information about threats made to others - https://www.namepros.com/threads/ba...e-is-no-room-for-threats-on-namepros.1186257/

I really can't believe GoDaddy's actions on this.


Upon contacting Oxley for comment, he provided me with a screenshot of an Escrow.com transaction purportedly created by Agarwal.

In the transaction (#7813820), titled “Mutual settlement of fight,” Agarwal offers to withdraw his case against Oxley and allow the registrar to unlock Oxley’s domain names.

In exchange for this, Agarwal is asking for $5 million, according to the screenshot provided.

Oxley also sent screenshots of hundreds of emails and instant messages allegedly sent by Agarwal to Oxley.

In one string of 99 messages allegedly sent by Agarwal, numerous threats are made to Oxley, including “Ur [sic] ranch will burn one day,” “Ur [sic] car will catch fire,” “I will also take help from black magic,” and “I will pray to devil god to fulfill it.”

In another string, messages include “Ur [sic] children will pay for ur [sic] bad karma,” “All ur [sic] money will be no use to them,” and “U [sic] will cry blood tears.”
Believe me or not, I blame more godaddy than the complainant. Even if he is wrong or even if he just dreamed that he should receive anything, is his right to fill a complain and a court will decide if he is right or wrong. But godaddy has no involvement here, is not their job n'or they right to do anything, it's just an abuse and even more, they don't care if they are right or wrong. This is all about the money with godaddy, if they believe that these actions will bring them a bigger market share in India and make some millions, they will go ahead...in the same time, if tomorrow 1 millions domains will transfer away from godaddy because of this, they will change their mind in seconds and act like they didn't knew about the whole story. That's the reason for not replying to emails and comments, to give them room to play at both heads, that's godaddy, money talks.
 
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The justice system should be such that it is accessible even by the marginalized sections of the society. It is shameful that Mr Puneet misuses a fair justice system to arm-twist people and that too assets in foreign countries. In India, we truly have the best justice system that caters to 1/7th of the world population, and hence it is slow, which is being fixed by the current government. I am proud of my country since most judges are fearless and they even throw the rich and mighty into prison for their wrongdoings, which is not so in our neighbouring countries.
Since digital assets are a new subject for India's court system, the system might slowly evolve processes to dispose of such cases better than to order locking assets of a foreign investor as in the present case.
In this case, I would request Mr Oxley to file a stay of the lower court order in a higher court(this can happen super-quick). More importantly, Mr Oxley should pursue the case by filing a defamation suit in Rajasthan High court. The higher the damage claimed, the better for the case and the fees for the same in Rajasthan high court is less. In my opinion, a defamation suit for Rupees 7,000 – Rs 14,000 Crores($1Billion to $2 Billion USD) for the damages caused should be filed, and Mr Oxley should not accept apologies from Mr Puneet during the reconciliation phase of the proceedings. I am sure Mr Puneet would be sent to jail for a long, long time for indulging in extortion and defamation. This order will also help educate all the lawyers and the judges about the value of digital assets. This will set a precedent and create fear in the minds of scammers to not mess up with digital assets.
 
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putting aside the specific case here...is anyone else beside me reading this also rudely reminded of how any and all domains are just rented out digital assets we pay an annual rental fee for... how they are not say a car we go buy from dealer pay cash upfront and its ours... I mean if it wasnt so then such cases would never happen... and because they do happen and can happen it's just irrefutable proof and grim reminder... what we think we own in terms of domains can be in so many ways taken away from us..
 
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putting aside the specific case here...is anyone else beside me reading this also rudely reminded of how any and all domains are just rented out digital assets we pay an annual rental fee for... how they are not say a car we go buy from dealer pay cash upfront and its ours... I mean if it wasnt so then such cases would never happen... and because they do happen and can happen it's just irrefutable proof and grim reminder... what we think we own in terms of domains can be in so many ways taken away from us..
They have the same value as in leasing a car. By leasing, you are the user of the car but the owner remains the leasing company until everything is paid. Even if there is a disagreement between the user and the owner, the owner can't do anything until he has a final court decision, so it should be the same case here as well...godaddy is not even the owner here, he is just a garage where you keep your car, so has no right here, it's just a temporary host for your car, but he closes the garage doors to force you not to leave.
 
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They have the same value as in leasing a car. By leasing, you are the user of the car but the owner remains the leasing company until everything is paid. Even if there is a disagreement between the user and the owner, the owner can't do anything until he has a final court decision, so it should be the same case here as well...godaddy is not even the owner here, he is just a garage where you keep your car, so has no right here, it's just a temporary host for your car, but he closes the garage doors to force you not to leave.

yes that's why I said pay cash upfront for car..not lease it.

I read all this and the sad reality reminds itself.. no matter how great and valuable the domain we are not it's TRUE owners.. at least not in the sense that would prevent us from things like this happening... and aside from this other things can happen too... dont get me wrong I love domaining... but truth be told if ever I did own million dollar names i may be thinking twice about holding them versus maybe selling sooner not later

but ...I'm kinda stating obvious too... cause everyone knows we pay rental fee on them. stop paying and it's over.
 
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As some of you may know, Brent likes guns. Big guns. Like this one:

upload_2021-3-6_1-57-59.png


Yup, that's Brent's rig - courtesy of Andrew Allemann.

I think I understand why you included this picture, to cite the AR15.com issue... but c'mon man that has to be quite an intimidating image to rehash in this thread for the plaintiff @barybadrinath to inevitably bear witness. It's one thing to stare down the barrel of a lawsuit, but it's a-whole-nother thing to stare down an image of the barrel of a tank that belongs to the guy you're suing. seeing the image posted in this thread from the plaintiffs perspective

I would assume he already knows he's suing somebody who owns DriveTanks.com, nonetheless, the added imagery is umm.... theatrics? As if this needed any more theatrics, but I guess as the old adage goes "...only in domaining are such stories possible."

I'm not pointing out the tank intimidation to make fun, make this political, or summons cancel culture. I'm more so wondering where/if some sugar can be found, in the off chance both parties can squeeze any remaining juice out of this sour situation, and begin turning lemons into lemonade.

Y'all see... It's approaching 3:00 AM, and I should probably be sleeping. But after reading any good mystery novel, Hollywood series or in this case, doom scrolling through some of the alleged/possible connections surrounding this situation, and the backgrounds of the involved parties, I am left popping more popcorn like others following along, and clinching to see how this will all unfold. At this point, who knows which way things will turn, but one angle I think worth exploring is the cinematic or Vice style documentary amicable ending.

I have no idea how "movie rights" work, or what the market is for "documentary rights", but perhaps that could be an avenue for @barybadrinath to gain desired compensation and/or share his story or if this could be an opportunity to answer to any to his newfound media notoriety. I mean, dude (Mr. Argawal) from India gets sued by Facebook, loses, then goes up against dude who had 9-figure exit, that now plays with tanks... for fun, actual tanks. I'm sure Hollywood can add a spin to this story and provide it a deserving cinematic ending. Hollywood ending 🤩 or ⚖ Judicial Proceedings... hmmm.

Far out suggestion.
  1. Mr. Argawal drops the case, and removes all hexes immediately.
  2. Mr. Oxley agree's to appear in Mr. Argawal's documentary, and authorizes some tank footage provided a producer/funding is found (perhaps Christian Colson).
  3. Lawyers go home, and @Rob Monster helps iron out any wrinkles by being appointed the neutral ombudsman.
Hollywood lemonade aside, I do hope the executives involved (e.g. the not active on namePros GoDaddy CEO Mr. Bhutani and whomever he and his legal team did or did not consult) take a long hard look at what's transpiring here, and patch any potential legal exploits this situation may have turned up.

Until more details are known, or unless things are settled behind the scenes, it's beginning to look like March Madness again on namePros... as the popcorn seems to be popping at March-like levels again.

giphy.gif
 
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After reading everything here and in the article, I wanted to address some of the questions swirling around about this.

There were many factors in deciding if we locked domains or kept domains locked in the India case between Mr. Oxley and Mr. Agarwal.

For instance, a U.S. federal court denied Mr. Oxley’s request for an order requiring GoDaddy to unlock the domains. If Mr. Oxley had been able to obtain a court order requiring us to unlock the domains, we would have gladly done it. The fact he was unable to do so suggests how much more complicated this issue is than is mentioned in the article. It’s not just monetary issues, but demands for the cancellation of the domain registrations at issue.

We understand how important your domain names are to you. We don’t make the decision to lock or unlock any domain name lightly. GoDaddy, along with other registrars, like NameCheap, Web.com, MarkMonitor and even VeriSign, reserve the right to lock domains in response to notification of a legal dispute.

In fact, it is the industry standard to ensure that registration rights for domain names are protected and maintained during the pendency of a legal dispute. Locking domains protects all parties until the legal dispute is resolved.

We also want to assure everyone that when a domain is locked, the goal is to keep the registration information at status quo. If the registrant would like to make changes to their DNS, they can contact our team to make them. They are able to renew the domain names. The domain and any associated web/mail services continue to function normally.

We understand Mr. Oxley’s frustration. No one wants to be in this situation, but the systems that we and the industry have in place are there for your protection.


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!
 
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