I spoke to Aman and Paul Nicks multiple times about this situation for Brent over the last 12 months about this situation.
These locks interfered with over $900,000 in deals that VPN.com was working on for Brent. Significant delays and failed solutions were induced into our negotiations because of these locks. Outside of our deals, I am sure Brent's total damages from domains that he would have sold are now over $3 million USD due to these locks... which should pain every domainer.
While we have always been supportive of GoDaddy and its position in the domain industry over the years, this has become a situation that is not right.
As listed on this thread, Puneet made multiple threats against Brent's life, his family, and his business prior to submitting the claim to GoDaddy. He knew that this litigation would lock Brent's domains and use these threats to extort Brent through a publically traded U.S. company. It is against US law to threaten a business with threats or violence.
Puneet's conduct rises to criminal racketeering and conspiracy according to
18 U.S. Code § 1951 but because he is not inside the U.S. or a U.S. citizen, a ruling would be useless without extradition.
For American citizens, this is a felony punishable by 1-15 years in a U.S. prison, upon conviction. Additionally, without a signed contract between Puneet and Brent, which was never submitted in court, there is no claim against the ownership of these domains, just a frivolous lawsuit in Hindi that lists domain names. Even so, GoDaddy automatically locked the names.
As I told Justin Redman, GoDaddy's Assistant General Council, if you are going to lock domains under the guise of your company policy without reasonable evidence, you are forcing GoDaddy customers into a terrible legal position to protect their assets registered at GoDaddy.
The only remaining remedy Brent (and other customers) have is to litigate with GoDaddy, which would be an absolute nightmare for both parties and the entire domain industry. Everyone would prefer an amicable solution.
Here is the except from
GoDaddy's Terms of Service that speaks to this issue:
You acknowledge and agree that GoDaddy and registry reserve the right to deny, cancel or transfer any registration or transaction, or place any domain name(s) on lock, hold or similar status, as either deems necessary, in the unlimited and sole discretion of either GoDaddy or the registry: (i) to comply with specifications adopted by any industry group generally recognized as authoritative with respect to the Internet (e.g., RFCs), (ii) to protect the integrity and stability of, and correct mistakes made by, any domain name registry or registrar, (iii) for the non-payment of fees to registry, (iv) to protect the integrity and stability of the registry, (v) to comply with any applicable court orders, laws, government rules or requirements, requests of law enforcement, or any dispute resolution process, (vi) to comply with any applicable ICANN rules or regulations, including without limitation, the registry agreement, (vii) to avoid any liability, civil or criminal, on the part of registry operator, as well as its affiliates, subsidiaries, officers, directors, and employees, (viii) per the terms of this Agreement, (ix) following an occurrence of any of the prohibited activities described in Section 8 below, or (x) during the resolution of a dispute.
While GoDaddy's Terms of Service may allow them to lock these assets for a period to review a complaint, there is an extremely thin line between their Terms of Service and what becomes ongoing tortious interference to the resolution of this matter.
GoDaddy should not involve itself in business disputes that do not challenge the ownership of domain names. This opens GoDaddy up to a substantial amount of liability to interpret legal cases outside a courtroom. This interpretation can now be influenced by frivolous litigation, cancel culture, or outright bias against an account holder.
Brent Oxley runs one of the largest wildlife and hunting ranch in North America. He believes in the 2nd amendment. If you leave any business dispute that mentions a domain name up to GoDaddy to interpret, it can become very hard to tell how much politics is playing into his treatment by GoDaddy, given their unilateral authority.
Aman Bhutani and GoDaddy's culture are on opposite ends of the American political spectrum compared to Brent Oxley. This is especially true since Aman sits on the
Board of the New York Times, which published
this bleak article about Brent's ranch and wildlife preservation efforts. I sincerely hope this was not a matter of influence but the unfolding of this situation has led us to these thoughts of possibility.
As far as a solution, it is highly likely this is NOT the first time Puneet has utilized GoDaddy's policy to extort people who host at GoDaddy. If there are findings to this end, GoDaddy would be able to lift the locks through the term bolded in section (vii) above.
Given the lack of evidence or a signed contract submitted to the court, GoDaddy would be unlocking the names to avoid any liability or becoming an accessory after the fact, that would arise towards them from Brent's position. This seems to be the most logical next step and one that would allow confidence to be retained in GoDaddy by the entire domain industry.
GoDaddy has the unilateral authority to cancel a domain name from your account for any reason or no reason at all. As we have seen with Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, and Parler, this is a very heavy burden for any company to always get right.
There must be better protection domain owners can deploy against this risk, otherwise, scammers now have the entire playbook.
I hope we have a positive update from GoDaddy very soon regarding this situation.
Michael Gargiulo
CEO at VPN.com