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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 complicated part is how can Godaddy achieve to not alienate customers that care about their access to the property nobody has a better claim to, yet, and still minimize legal liability/vulnerability, and still be in compliance with laws and rules. Complicated enough?
 
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Again , there is nothing complicated at all about not being invloved in a commission dispute without a court order. Pretending that there is a legal liability for a registrar to not get involved in a commission dispute without a court order doesn't work. So, no , not complicated enough.
 
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He said we can expect an update next week. It can be half-assed, in which case I won’t like it. It can also be adequate. It probably won’t be perfect.
 
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And if they find that the current ToS survived on the basis of ”no-show” of conundrums like this one, they should edit it, unlock Mr. Oxleys domains, and evaluate financial compensation for him and others in the same situation (who rely on the transferrability and ownership change of their domains).
 
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GD is making it “complicated” to wiggle out of the situation. You have mounted the tiger. How to get down?

GD is the one that makes it complicated and he aka Paul THINKS WE are STUPID not reading the lines.
His tone is so condescending.
 
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GD is the one that makes it complicated and he aka Paul THINKS WE are STUPID not reading the lines.
His tone is so condescending.

This won't help either, I'm afraid.
 
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Not knowing who Brent is one thing but not knowing the domains he owns is a slap in the face to the domain community and worst of all HE aka Paul does not know the domains Brent owns.......if that the case, he should not be in this domain business!!
 
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I also think that they should make a full blown press release of their decision. Unless it’s a half-assed ass-cover, in which case they should bury it, and any remaining domainer love with it.
 
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GD is the one that makes it complicated and he aka Paul THINKS WE are STUPID not reading the lines.
His tone is so condescending.

In all fairness to everyone things could get a little complicated at times even if the Members here at NamePros collectively owned a Registrar of their own (maybe not a bad idea :xf.wink:)

While most domainers are not doing anything illegal, but we can't deny the fact that there are some bad actors whom the domain Industry has to be able to deal with in certain situations.

Adding to that all the politics involved with domain names being used as a vehicle for free speech,

And putting into consideration the intense competition that exists in the domain Industry,

It seems that certain issues and problems are bound to arise even with the best of Registrars,

The important thing here is to have transparency and accountability across the whole Industry by having a set of Uniform Standards and Policies that can clearly define everyone's Responsibilities and Rights.

The most important of these Standards and Policies should be the fact that Registrant Rights should not be allowed to be overridden by anyone without a court order from the proper jurisdiction and that the Registrars and Registries should not be permitted to get in direct and aggressive competition with their customers over their domains and other digital assets.

IMO
 
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Wanted to give everyone a quick update before the weekend. We've been having numerous calls with outside experts and internally as we continue to review our processes. We've made a lot of good progress, but this is a complicated issue and there is still more to do.

We want to make sure we get this right. Not just for Brent, but for everyone in this industry that we want to support.

So, please know I'm reading each post here and adding any new info into our analysis. Expect more information next week.
Who is the "We" in "We want to make sure we get this right."?

Meaning, does the "we" consist of actual decisionmakers in this matter?

As someone already mentioned....it's a simple question that GoDaddy should be able to answer as quickly as it's competitors have....

Will GoDaddy continue it's policy of locking the domains of their customer, without notice, when alerted to a business dispute by a non customer without formal legal service or a valid court order?
 
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Did VPN actually speak to him or is it BS? - I suspect BS........

I have no reason to believe calling BS on @VPN.com's Michael Gargiulo is/was warranted. I'm inclined to believe the comment, and that Mr. Gargiulo did in fact speak with Mr. Bhutani regarding this. Though, I know no more than you, and am simply speculating based off of the comment.

As Mr. Gargiulo stated he explicitly did so about this case. Though, the method of communication was not mentioned, and without speculating too much I think it's worth noting that a vast amount of domain related communication occurs behind the scenes (to include private forums).



Here are the details you are looking for. We reached out to Paul and Aman for Brent in February 2020, as you can see below. @Paul Nicks, quickly referred me to Justin Redman, who is GoDaddy's Assistant General Counsel. It was GoDaddy's legal team that made the final policy decision to keep the locks in place.

For context, these emails were sent when over $850,000 in our brokered deals for @create.com Brent Oxley and @DomainingCom Francois Carrillo were being jeopardized by these locks.

As you will read below, we offered to fully indemnify GoDaddy to protect them from any future liability created from the frivolous litigation if they unlocked the names. After being completely out of options, we even asked for GoDaddy to allow account changes of the domain, internal to GoDaddy, so they still had control. This was also denied by GoDaddy's legal team until the dispute was settled or withdrawn from the Indian court.


I also included the complete documents that were served in Hindi and the official translation that we attached for Aman, Paul, and Justin. No contract with Brent or evidence attached, just a complete rant.

Before we received the English version back from a Hindi legal translator, the domains had already been locked by GoDaddy. Weeks went by without us actually knowing what the documents in Hindi said or why GoDaddy had locked the domains. This part of the process was most troubling. Puneet sent the documents to GoDaddy before Brent was ever served. He knew Brent would be blindsided by GoDaddy's lock (because he has likely done this before).

In fairness to Aman, Paul, Justin, and GoDaddy's legal team they have to manage thousands of different legal situations. Divorces, death, lawsuits, and abusive litigation all factor into GoDaddy's daily role as the largest registry on earth. I do think this was one area where their Terms of Service overstepped and is causing a bad situation to get worse unless the locks are lifted.

Without somehow accounting for frivolous or unsubstantiated claims in the future, GoDaddy's policy decision to keep the locks in place could seriously jeopardize the value of domains across the broader market.

If GoDaddy unlocked the domains and developed an owner-friendly policy change, inspired by Brent's unsubstantiated situation, they could be the hero in all this. The ICA may need to promote additional reform by ICANN.

13 months later and we continue to patiently wait for recognition by GoDaddy of what is going on. I also hope they find a positive solution very soon to mitigate frivolous complaints and future abuses of GoDaddy policies.

Michael Gargiulo
CEO at VPN.com




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Attachments

  • Certification_OXLEY_012220 (2).pdf
    171 KB · Views: 222
  • Court Certified Copy (1) (1) (3).pdf
    4.6 MB · Views: 214
  • Court certified copy_English (3).pdf
    201 KB · Views: 258
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@Paul Nicks - Let us hope that indeed there will be substantive news on this matter in the coming week. (I note that the two main protagonists, outside of GoDaddy that is, are presently quiet on this thread and 'hope' that is a good sign in itself for the dispute between them.)

However, it is now for GoDaddy who by its previous actions and those coming to the public arena that many, indeed I would say 'most', of the domainers on here and elsewhere are concerned with. GoDaddy has in my opinion an awful lot of bridge building to do, half hearted and/or meaningless platitudes from GoDaddy regarding this case or any similar case past, present, or future, will simply diminish GoDaddy's standing further. Please relay this to those in position within your company who will decide on this matter and implore them that it is not now just the matter of Create.com that is important here but the trust of domainers the world over to know whether they can now trust GoDaddy on an individual as well as collective basis.
 
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@VPN.com @create.com Seem t/m, you don't know much about P.A.'s business practice etc. What you don't know about your business partner can hurt your business. In this case, I would hire a pro DD company. To conduct business due diligence alone is not healthy.

Regards
 
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Sometimes a simple google search will tell you not to put your **** in the crazy and save you due diligence money.
 
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Hello Everyone. I was out since last some days.

1) Brent sir has categorically lied and fabricated many email thread which he has posted online. I have not seen every so called screenshot as I do not have access to desktop right now. Will be doing it once I reach home. One of the domainer has shared an email thread with me allegedly sent by my wife to Brent sir. Wow. Lol.
Lol
Your content creators did 2 mistakes in that Brent sir .

2) Namecheap used the word "whim" just to put their own agenda in place against GoDaddy. Namecheap would have also locked the domain names registered with them if I would have fulfilled one of their legal requirement. Will come to it later on.

3) Three - 4 days ago Brent sir again sent an email to my wife mentioning that I have been defamed properly on the charges of drugs , mafia , prostitute , underworld and whatso not.

4) right now I am travelling and will respond once I get back to my office.

5) Regarding credit card and all I have never ever paid any payment on my own.

6) In his thread Brent sir has been saying here that why he should not sent my snort payment as I already owe him money according to him. But the email thread which I have proved that you confirmed to me that my compensation has been sent. Though I never received it .

7) Mr Monte Cahn did you file police complaint against the people who hacked your account.
 
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Hello Everyone. I was out since last some days.

1) Brent sir has categorically lied and fabricated many email thread which he has posted obline
Which ones?
 
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Who is the "We" in "We want to make sure we get this right."?

Meaning, does the "we" consist of actual decisionmakers in this matter?

As someone already mentioned....it's a simple question that GoDaddy should be able to answer as quickly as it's competitors have....

Will GoDaddy continue it's policy of locking the domains of their customer, without notice, when alerted to a business dispute by a non customer without formal legal service or a valid court order?
I thought you were a lawyer ?
 
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saving face!

well no..the only way to save face now imo is as I said thru being clear and honest...not mysterious unclear and more ambiguity..
 
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I see by the post above from @barybadrinath that my 'hope' previously stated was premature. I was hoping that finally sense would prevail, obviously not though.
 
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I'm moving my domains away from GoDaddy. I just read from this thread they shut down Gab as well.

Americans will really drown themselves trying to be nice and "just" haha. Anybody who has dealt in business with the thirld world would see this from miles away. Even if it would be Indian court decision I would expect them to ask for a American one. This is insanity.

As far as I'm concerned this company is just too big of a liability. Red flags have been going off for a long time now anyways.
 
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It would get complex, no doubt, but idea of a co-operatively owned registrar is an interesting idea. Has it ever been considered or tried in past?
Bob

@Bob Hawkes , I am not 100% sure if the idea of the Members here collectively owning a Registrar has been discussed here or not, but theoretically I don't see any obstacles in the way of bringing this idea to reality.

We probably first need to create a legal entity through some kind of an Association or Corporation so that it can apply for being a Registrar, but you need to check with ICANN to see which legal entities can actually qualify for this according to their rules.

I guess we have to come up with a nice name for our Association and select all the people who are going to run it and probably charge some kind of an Association Fee so that it can become self sustaining by itself.

Bob, since you asked about this I guess you should create a thread to see how everyone here feels about owning their own Registrar, and at the same time it would be nice if you used your research and journalistic abilities to find out all the requirements from ICANN.

It's worth noting that once the Association is created it can also provide other services to the Members such as help with legal issues and disputes or help with facilitating domain sales and transactions (amongst many other services such as providing Insurance against loss of domains or for different kinds of liabilities).

IMO
 
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Wanted to give everyone a quick update before the weekend. We've been having numerous calls with outside experts and internally as we continue to review our processes. We've made a lot of good progress, but this is a complicated issue and there is still more to do.

We want to make sure we get this right. Not just for Brent, but for everyone in this industry that we want to support.

So, please know I'm reading each post here and adding any new info into our analysis. Expect more information next week.
Reading between the lines, the translation would be ' we have consulted some extra lawyers, to make sure how we stand, if Brent would be smart enough to sue us, If the risk to recognize our mistake is too high in a later court case, we will choose option 1, 'the ostrich way', if the risk is not so high, we will recognize the mistake, giving the domaining community what they want and we will become their hero's. Either way, the main purpose will be to make sure that godaddy will look innocent at the end of this.'
 
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Reading between the lines, the translation would be ' we have consulted some extra lawyers, to make sure how we stand, if Brent would be smart enough to sue us, If the risk to recognize our mistake is too high in a later court case, we will choose option 1, 'the ostrich way', if the risk is not so high, we will recognize the mistake, giving the domaining community what they want and we will become their hero's. Either way, the main purpose will be to make sure that godaddy will look innocent at the end of this.'

While we analyze what Godaddy is calculating to do, it's only fair that we figure out what the domaining community here wants to do too, that is:

Destroy or Reform

IMO
 
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There is a lot of noise in this thread. Difficult to figure things out. But the contents of the emails and messages are very disturbing. Threats against family members, praying to a devil god for death, etc. This is not going to end well for someone. It's going to be a stain on domain investing.

Still don't understand what is the plaintiff's goal. Is it compensation? Apparently he feels unfairly treated. So what would be fair? If the issue is compensation for brokerage or bringing parties to the table, then why is a registrar involved?
 
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