10,000 .EU domains suspended

[Sameh]

EURid, the operator of the .EU registry has suspended 10,000 domains registered by a Chinese woman for cybersquatting.

EURid, the Belgium-based registry for .eu domain names, has blocked the names and has the right to strip the woman, Zheng Qingyin, of the names. EURid legal manager Herman Sobrie told OUT-LAW, though, that the organisation wanted to have a court strip Qingyin of the addresses. He said that case would take around a year.

Qingyin has filed a separate suit objecting to the blocking of the domains in the Court of First Instance in Brussels. This is a fast-track case whose result should be known in a month, Sobrie said.

“This Chinese woman has registered over 10,000 names, she is without doubt cybersquatting,” said Sobrie. “We know she sells these names to people for serious prices. This is a phenomenon we don’t like at all, but there is nothing illegal about this.”

In order for the registry to take action against someone suspected for cybersquatting EURid has to have received several complaints.

“We as registery can just stand there and look at it except in one situation, which is that maybe this registrant is not eligible to have a .eu domain,” said Sobrie. Only people or organisations which are based in the European Union are entitled to hold .eu addresses.

“We started asking for more information about her domicile. She said she was domiciled in London. At first we took that for granted, but we had indications that that was probably not true,” he said. “We have serious doubts about the eligibility of that lady and at a certain point we thought we had enough reason to say that she wasn’t eligible. Under the circumstances we preferred to sue in a Belgian court and have the names revoked by the court rather than do it ourselves and be sued.”

A little more than a year ago EURid suspended over 74,000 domain names and sued “phantom” registrars for registering the names with the intention to resell them.

From DomainNameNews
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[gazzip]

Nice to see they are actually trying to do something about it at last :tu:


.

 

[SpongyBob]

Hmmmm. So they pick on what appears to be an individual, yet don't seem to have done anything about the companies that sliced up the .eu market. Seems their justice is a little bit on the random side.

 

[accent]

“This Chinese woman has registered over 10,000 names, she is without doubt cybersquatting,” said Sobrie. “We know she sells these names to people for serious prices. This is a phenomenon we don’t like at all, but there is nothing illegal about this.”

There it is again:
buying domains to resell for "serious prices" = cybersquating = bad

They are going after her on a technicality, but they "don’t like at all" what we call domaining. I notice that they cash the checks, though.

 

[jmcc]

There it is again:
buying domains to resell for "serious prices" = cybersquating = bad

I don't think that Herman Sobrie has a clue when it comes to domain issues. EURid's handling of the cybersquatting/cyberwarehousing issue in .eu has been nothing short of an utter disgrace.

They are going after her on a technicality, but they "don’t like at all" what we call domaining. I notice that they cash the checks, though.

Just to clarify this:
The Zheng operation is a cybersquatting/cyberwarehousing operation.
It is not a domaining operation.
It has actively targeted European (and non-European) trademarks and business names.

The domicile of Zheng is questionable as the mail address is apparently a mail drop and UK phone numbers are easy enough to acquire. The domains registered by Zheng were all registered via two Chinese .eu registrars. The nameservers for the domains were (initially) Buycool.com and then Blogdo.com. Zheng is the biggest single loser of ADRs (the .eu equivalent of UDRP actions) and these ADRs were brought by only a small number of the intellectual property rights owners that have been targeted in this scam. Registering a trademark or business name and then trying to sell it back to the affected party is cybersquatting. It is not domaining.

Regards...jmcc

Nice to see they are actually trying to do something about it at last :tu:

Yeah. Now if they could only strip the morons in EURid of the contract to run .eu and give the contract to a competent registry who will really go after the cyberwarehousers/cybersquatters.

Regards...jmcc

 

[FPForum]

wow she's out of alot of money..10,000 domains from one person? holy crap is all I have to say!!

 

[Kate]

IMO they wasted their money on useless domains... serves them well

 

[jmcc]

wow she's out of alot of money..10,000 domains from one person? holy crap is all I have to say!!

Which accounts for the valid suspicion that she is actually a front for a cyberwarehousing/cybersquatter operation. The whole .eu ccTLD has suffered because of the incompetence of EURid in dealing with this cybersquatting/cyberwarehousing problem. The sad part is that the morons in EURid will probably make a mess of this case as well.

Regards...jmcc