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

[James Iles]

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

 

[sharfab]

@paulnicks. Has this policy changed been communicated to Brent and have Go Daddy rectified his issue to Brent's liking...

 

[Tryjake]

All, I’d like to provide the community with another update on the recent situation. I appreciate all the opinions and engagement from the community.

As we reviewed our policies and procedures, our goal was to do what’s right for our domain investors and to protect the industry from domain theft. Your domain names need to be accessible and sellable, we get it. To be clear, this isn’t just about Brent’s issue, it’s about the long-term health of the aftermarket. The aftermarket has changed in the last 20 years, and our long-standing policy needed to address these changes.

Frankly, we needed to evolve with the times. After many discussions with outside experts, lawyers, and trade groups, we believe we have found the right balance. The new solution allows domain investing businesses to proceed while having robust anti-theft measures.

Moving forward, when we are notified of a legal dispute between two parties, we will not lock domains by default as we had previously done. We will review each notification and reserve the right to impose a 30-day interim hold, in part to help protect against improper domain flight, until a court order is obtained by the complainant. If a court order has not been received within 30 days of implementing a hold, then we will remove the hold.

While we can't guarantee we can stop all abuse of our system, we will use best efforts and multiple layers of review to root out potential bad actors.

As this rolls out, please let me know if you hear of any issue the new policy is raising. We'll continue to listen to your feedback and review our policies to ensure they do what's right for the domain investor community, while still maintaining antitheft practices.

Sir,
Can you tell me if during that 30 day period there will be clear communication from y’all to us(those who have an account) especially when the lock is removed but including particularly the exact time of the lock initiation as well as when y’all get the initial complaint?

I am not a lawyer but have been around the legislative and judicial process a little so just curious. I can understand the need to lock a situation down for many reasons.

Thank you!

 

[Paul Nicks]

@paulnicks. Has this policy changed been communicated to Brent and have Go Daddy rectified his issue to Brent's liking...

I won't be sharing what's been communicated to Brent, he's free to update if he sees fit.

 

[Paul Nicks]

Sir,
Can you tell me if during that 30 day period there will be clear communication from y’all to us(those who have an account) especially when the lock is removed but including particularly the exact time of the lock initiation as well as when y’all get the initial complaint?

I am not a lawyer but have been around the legislative and judicial process a little so just curious. I can understand the need to lock a situation down for many reasons.

Thank you!

Great call out. Yes, we are looking at every aspect of how and when we communicate with our customers. Our goal is to communicate transparently and quickly when an issue like this arises.

 

[TheBaldOne]

@Paul Nicks - Thank you for the update.

A few questions if I might.

1) Has Brent had his domain/s unlocked? (If 'yes' then it is a good thing, it should have been done a lot earlier, but that is for Brent to decide what to do about that. If 'no' then clearly your changes in policy are not retrospective and therefore show bad faith IMO.)

2) How is it that your customer service reportedly 'ignored' repeated requests from one of your customers? Has this now been resolved and a practice or practices been put in place where this WILL NOT HAPPEN AGAIN TO ANY CUSTOMER?

3) Is the 30 day interim hold a singular non-repeatable term, i.e. at the end of one 30 day lock the domain shall not be locked again such as in the situation whereby a subsequent interim lock can be implemented at the end or near the end of the existing 30 day interim lock, and this process occurring ad infinitum?

4) As there was no implication from the evidence given by either party in this thread that Create.com had been stolen then can you please indicate how under your (now) previous policy what the reason was that the domain name Create.com was 'locked' at all?

I will let the lawyers post other questions (more than likely by PM to yourself or via email privately), but as a lowly domainer I do wish to know the answers to the above.

I also note that at no stage in your statement above do you on behalf of GoDaddy accept that GoDaddy or its employees erred either in law or even good faith towards a customer. This in itself I see as a damning indictment of your statement, a statement that I am sure GoDaddy lawyers either wrote or had a hand in agreeing to the wording and publication.

GoDaddy remains at the bottom of the list of registrars as far as I am concerned until this matter is entirely resolved including the points I raise above and those I am sure other members here will raise publicly and/or privately.

 

[boker]

All, I’d like to provide the community with another update on the recent situation. I appreciate all the opinions and engagement from the community.

As we reviewed our policies and procedures, our goal was to do what’s right for our domain investors and to protect the industry from domain theft. Your domain names need to be accessible and sellable, we get it. To be clear, this isn’t just about Brent’s issue, it’s about the long-term health of the aftermarket. The aftermarket has changed in the last 20 years, and our long-standing policy needed to address these changes.

Frankly, we needed to evolve with the times. After many discussions with outside experts, lawyers, and trade groups, we believe we have found the right balance. The new solution allows domain investing businesses to proceed while having robust anti-theft measures.

Moving forward, when we are notified of a legal dispute between two parties, we will not lock domains by default as we had previously done. We will review each notification and reserve the right to impose a 30-day interim hold, in part to help protect against improper domain flight, until a court order is obtained by the complainant. If a court order has not been received within 30 days of implementing a hold, then we will remove the hold.

While we can't guarantee we can stop all abuse of our system, we will use best efforts and multiple layers of review to root out potential bad actors.

As this rolls out, please let me know if you hear of any issue the new policy is raising. We'll continue to listen to your feedback and review our policies to ensure they do what's right for the domain investor community, while still maintaining antitheft practices.

Everybody must admit that this is a step forward, but why it needed over a year and public pressure to make this small change? So, without making this public, godaddy would have gone forward with the same policy.
In the same time, this will leave the door open for other abuses. In the first place, why not require a court order from courts based on same general rules as US courts. For example, there are countries where a judge can issue a court order only if a complain was made, not waiting for a final judgement. Also, what will stop a guy to make a complain every 30 days or so to keep them locked for months or years, when it takes only $11 or even for free in some countries, to make a complain. Also, why do you need to get involved , when it's a case like this, a commercial issue between two parties, with no involvement of fraud or something related to the rights of registration. For example, the issues between a broker and a domain owner, between a customer of a website and a domain owner, with or without a complain or court order, the registrar should not get involved.

 

[Paul Nicks]

@Paul Nicks - Thank you for the update.

A few questions if I might.

1) Has Brent had his domain/s unlocked? (If 'yes' then it is a good thing, it should have been done a lot earlier, but that is for Brent to decide what to do about that. If 'no' then clearly your changes in policy are not retrospective and therefore show bad faith IMO.)

2) How is it that your customer service reportedly 'ignored' repeated requests from one of your customers? Has this now been resolved and a practice or practices been put in place where this WILL NOT HAPPEN AGAIN TO ANY CUSTOMER?

3) Is the 30 day interim hold a singular non-repeatable term, i.e. at the end of one 30 day lock the domain shall not be locked again such as in the situation whereby a subsequent interim lock can be implemented at the end or near the end of the existing 30 day interim lock, and this process occurring ad infinitum?

4) As there was no implication from the evidence given by either party in this thread that Create.com had been stolen then can you please indicate how under your (now) previous policy what the reason was that the domain name Create.com was 'locked' at all?

I will let the lawyers post other questions (more than likely by PM to yourself or via email privately), but as a lowly domainer I do wish to know the answers to the above.

I also note that at no stage in your statement above do you on behalf of GoDaddy accept that GoDaddy or its employees erred either in law or even good faith towards a customer. This in itself I see as a damning indictment of your statement, a statement that I am sure GoDaddy lawyers either wrote or had a hand in agreeing to the wording and publication.

GoDaddy remains at the bottom of the list of registrars as far as I am concerned until this matter is entirely resolved including the points I raise above and those I am sure other members here will raise publicly and/or privately.

We're not going to get into details of our old or new policies and decisions that were made with respect to a particular account. But I can tell you that we have improved our customer service processes and where we see abuse of our policy, we will take action. So, we don't expect domain names to be tied up for long periods of time.

 

[Silentptnr]

All, I’d like to provide the community with another update on the recent situation. I appreciate all the opinions and engagement from the community.

As we reviewed our policies and procedures, our goal was to do what’s right for our domain investors and to protect the industry from domain theft. Your domain names need to be accessible and sellable, we get it. To be clear, this isn’t just about Brent’s issue, it’s about the long-term health of the aftermarket. The aftermarket has changed in the last 20 years, and our long-standing policy needed to address these changes.

Frankly, we needed to evolve with the times. After many discussions with outside experts, lawyers, and trade groups, we believe we have found the right balance. The new solution allows domain investing businesses to proceed while having robust anti-theft measures.

Moving forward, when we are notified of a legal dispute between two parties, we will not lock domains by default as we had previously done. We will review each notification and reserve the right to impose a 30-day interim hold, in part to help protect against improper domain flight, until a court order is obtained by the complainant. If a court order has not been received within 30 days of implementing a hold, then we will remove the hold.

While we can't guarantee we can stop all abuse of our system, we will use best efforts and multiple layers of review to root out potential bad actors.

As this rolls out, please let me know if you hear of any issue the new policy is raising. We'll continue to listen to your feedback and review our policies to ensure they do what's right for the domain investor community, while still maintaining antitheft practices.

That sounds like a reasonable policy. Thank you for that update. Truly.

 

[TheBaldOne]

We're not going to get into details of our old or new policies and decisions that were made with respect to a particular account. But I can tell you that we have improved our customer service processes and where we see abuse of our policy, we will take action. So, we don't expect domain names to be tied up for long periods of time.

Is that a lesson in saying nothing in a lot of words.

 

[Future Sensors]

All, I’d like to provide the community with another update on the recent situation. I appreciate all the opinions and engagement from the community.

As we reviewed our policies and procedures, our goal was to do what’s right for our domain investors and to protect the industry from domain theft. Your domain names need to be accessible and sellable, we get it. To be clear, this isn’t just about Brent’s issue, it’s about the long-term health of the aftermarket. The aftermarket has changed in the last 20 years, and our long-standing policy needed to address these changes.

Frankly, we needed to evolve with the times. After many discussions with outside experts, lawyers, and trade groups, we believe we have found the right balance. The new solution allows domain investing businesses to proceed while having robust anti-theft measures.

Moving forward, when we are notified of a legal dispute between two parties, we will not lock domains by default as we had previously done. We will review each notification and reserve the right to impose a 30-day interim hold, in part to help protect against improper domain flight, until a court order is obtained by the complainant. If a court order has not been received within 30 days of implementing a hold, then we will remove the hold.

While we can't guarantee we can stop all abuse of our system, we will use best efforts and multiple layers of review to root out potential bad actors.

As this rolls out, please let me know if you hear of any issue the new policy is raising. We'll continue to listen to your feedback and review our policies to ensure they do what's right for the domain investor community, while still maintaining antitheft practices.

Thanks a lot @Paul Nicks - it's going in the right direction.

You're mentioning internal policies and procedures. Could you also tell what changes have been made / will be made to Terms of Service (TOS) texts and other terms that customers have to agree with when purchasing products and services from Godaddy? It would be nice to see a "before and after" comparison on one page with all relevant changes.

 

[bmugford]

All, I’d like to provide the community with another update on the recent situation. I appreciate all the opinions and engagement from the community.

As we reviewed our policies and procedures, our goal was to do what’s right for our domain investors and to protect the industry from domain theft. Your domain names need to be accessible and sellable, we get it. To be clear, this isn’t just about Brent’s issue, it’s about the long-term health of the aftermarket. The aftermarket has changed in the last 20 years, and our long-standing policy needed to address these changes.

Frankly, we needed to evolve with the times. After many discussions with outside experts, lawyers, and trade groups, we believe we have found the right balance. The new solution allows domain investing businesses to proceed while having robust anti-theft measures.

Moving forward, when we are notified of a legal dispute between two parties, we will not lock domains by default as we had previously done. We will review each notification and reserve the right to impose a 30-day interim hold, in part to help protect against improper domain flight, until a court order is obtained by the complainant. If a court order has not been received within 30 days of implementing a hold, then we will remove the hold.

While we can't guarantee we can stop all abuse of our system, we will use best efforts and multiple layers of review to root out potential bad actors.

As this rolls out, please let me know if you hear of any issue the new policy is raising. We'll continue to listen to your feedback and review our policies to ensure they do what's right for the domain investor community, while still maintaining antitheft practices.

Thanks Paul. I am glad to see common sense prevail.

It is the right decision as you can't have domains locked indefinitely just based on a business dispute lawsuit, especially in a court with questionable jurisdiction over the registrant, without service of process, and without a court order.

This move will not prevent Puneet's lawsuit going forward. If Puneet's claims have merit, he can fight them in court. Then he can get a judgement, then he can have a US court sign off on enforcement of that judgement. There is a process that needs to be followed.

I am glad GoDaddy acknowledged there was an issue here and is working on fixing it moving forward.

Brad

 

[oldtimer]

We're not going to get into details of our old or new policies and decisions that were made with respect to a particular account. But I can tell you that we have improved our customer service processes and where we see abuse of our policy, we will take action. So, we don't expect domain names to be tied up for long periods of time.

I am sure that any steps that are taken in the right direction will be appreciated by the domaining community,

But it's also important for Godaddy to realize that there are many domainers here who are looking for some Industry wide reforms and who are not going to be content with just a few strategic changes made by Godaddy because of this specific case.

There are many other issues and problems that need to be addressed not only with Godaddy, but also with the way that Registrant and Customer Rights are currently being dealt with across the whole Industry.

But as I said any step taken to address this situation properly is a step in the right direction, you just have to make sure that it's not the only step that is going to be taken by Godaddy here.

There are many more problems and issues that need to be fixed in addition to what has happened in this specific case.

IMO

 

[bmugford]

I am sure that any steps that are taken in the right direction will be appreciated by the domaining community,

But it's also important for Godaddy to realize that there are many domainers here who are looking for some Industry wide reforms and who are not going to be content with just a few strategic changes made by Godaddy because of this specific case.

There are many other issues and problems that need to be addressed not only with Godaddy, but also with the way that Registrant and Customer Rights are currently being dealt with across the whole Industry.

But as I said any step taken to address this situation properly is a step in the right direction, you just have to make sure that it's not the only step that is going to be taken by Godaddy here.

There are many more problems and issues that need to be fixed in addition to what has happened in this specific case.

IMO

I agree with all this, but you have to start somewhere.

The ICA and other groups like the EFF are fighting for registrant rights. It was groups like them that brought awareness to, and had a large role in preventing the .ORG handover by ICANN to a private equity company that would have been a disaster for all registrants.

Brad

 

[The Rover]

Moving forward, when we are notified of a legal dispute between two parties, we will not lock domains by default as we had previously done. We will review each notification and reserve the right to impose a 30-day interim hold, in part to help protect against improper domain flight, until a court order is obtained by the complainant. If a court order has not been received within 30 days of implementing a hold, then we will remove the hold.

@Paul Nicks that seems like a reasonable policy, and I'm glad to hear that there's been some changes made. One concern I have, is whether you will reach out to the registrant the very moment that such a notification is received by GoDaddy, thus preventing this kind of thing from carrying on a day longer over your new 30 day hold policy.

We're not going to get into details of our old or new policies and decisions that were made with respect to a particular account. But I can tell you that we have improved our customer service processes and where we see abuse of our policy, we will take action. So, we don't expect domain names to be tied up for long periods of time.

I think you can likely offer a little more insight into what occurred here without jeopardizing the legal specifics of this particular case. I think many folks are are simply asking you what specific customer process failed to begin with in Brent's case, and how these processes will be improved. In other words, having this particular case stagnant for months at a time, I can't imagine GoDaddy customer service ignoring Brent's attempts to communicate with you, unless it was somehow intentional. From his posts here, @create.com seems to be just as clueless as we are, as to why that happened. So, what was the specific cause of the customer service failure for the repeated ignoring of Brent's communication attempts?

 

[GTBAAA]

Clearly they unlocked Brent's names. Create.com is already at namecheap.com.

Congrats Brent.

@barybadrinath Your favorite registrar, Godaddy, just told you to get packing and LEAVE.

Aman - I hope you enjoyed our emails.

 

[boker]

Clearly they unlocked Brent's names. Create.com is already at namecheap.com.

Congrats Brent.

@barybadrinath Your favorite registrar, Godaddy, just told you to go packing.

For me, it shows already at namecheap...looks like the update was in minutes.

 

[barybadrinath]

All, I’d like to provide the community with another update on the recent situation. I appreciate all the opinions and engagement from the community.

As we reviewed our policies and procedures, our goal was to do what’s right for our domain investors and to protect the industry from domain theft. Your domain names need to be accessible and sellable, we get it. To be clear, this isn’t just about Brent’s issue, it’s about the long-term health of the aftermarket. The aftermarket has changed in the last 20 years, and our long-standing policy needed to address these changes.

Frankly, we needed to evolve with the times. After many discussions with outside experts, lawyers, and trade groups, we believe we have found the right balance. The new solution allows domain investing businesses to proceed while having robust anti-theft measures.

Moving forward, when we are notified of a legal dispute between two parties, we will not lock domains by default as we had previously done. We will review each notification and reserve the right to impose a 30-day interim hold, in part to help protect against improper domain flight, until a court order is obtained by the complainant. If a court order has not been received within 30 days of implementing a hold, then we will remove the hold.

While we can't guarantee we can stop all abuse of our system, we will use best efforts and multiple layers of review to root out potential bad actors.

As this rolls out, please let me know if you hear of any issue the new policy is raising. We'll continue to listen to your feedback and review our policies to ensure they do what's right for the domain investor community, while still maintaining antitheft practices.

It seems Brent sir was right that he has got godaddy on his side especially his ceo. I noticed that create.com was unlocked on 11th itself.

Wow. What a speed. Domains were unlocked today and Same day itself got transferred to namecheap. I heard it takes at least 4 days for transfer to happen.

No problem Brent sir. Don't worry. I won't back down. I still have my legal options.
Godaddy you have done an illegal thing. And you will answer for it in Indian courts. This is gross injustice and open violation of your own policies and blatant disregard to Indian Judiciary. It's an open contempt of law.

Puneet Agarwal

 

[GTBAAA]

It seems Brent sir was right that he has got godaddy on his side especially his ceo. I noticed that create.com was unlocked on 11th itself.

Wow. What a speed. Domains were unlocked today and Same day itself got transferred to namecheap. I heard it takes at least 4 days for transfer to happen.

No problem Brent sir. Don't worry. I won't back down. I still have my legal options.
Godaddy you have done an illegal thing. And you will answer for it in Indian courts. This is gross injustice and open violation of your own policies and blatant disregard to Indian Judiciary. It's an open contempt of law.

Puneet Agarwal

LOSER in so many ways

 

[Lox]

.

 

[boker]

It seems Brent sir was right that he has got godaddy on his side especially his ceo. I noticed that create.com was unlocked on 11th itself.

Wow. What a speed. Domains were unlocked today and Same day itself got transferred to namecheap. I heard it takes at least 4 days for transfer to happen.

No problem Brent sir. Don't worry. I won't back down. I still have my legal options.
Godaddy you have done an illegal thing. And you will answer for it in Indian courts. This is gross injustice and open violation of your own policies and blatant disregard to Indian Judiciary. It's an open contempt of law.

Puneet Agarwal

You should use your experience, not what you hear...an expedite transfer takes minutes to finalize. The good/bad thing is that Brent can go ahead with his legal options against you and godaddy, everybody should keep us updated about the end of this.

 

[bmugford]

No problem Brent sir. Don't worry. I won't back down. I still have my legal options.
Godaddy you have done an illegal thing. And you will answer for it in Indian courts. This is gross injustice and open violation of your own policies and blatant disregard to Indian Judiciary. It's an open contempt of law.

Nope. The gross injustice was having millions of dollars of domains locked indefinitely in regards to a simple business dispute.

It is a further injustice that Brent had not been served, according to Indian court records, in over a year.

Brent moving his domains to another registrar has no impact on your lawsuit. The only thing you might lose is leverage that you should never have had in the first place.

Brad

 

[The Rover]

I can tell you that we have improved our customer service processes and where we see abuse of our policy, we will take action.

@Paul Nicks Your particular statement above can be construed that GoDaddy may have discovered possible "abuse" within your own customer service. You mentioned that GoDaddy's customer service does in fact need to be improved, and if abuse is ever found moving forward, that you will "take action". Can you confirm and/or clarify for everyone here, whether there was (or was not) some form of internal abuse that ended up being a component of this particular case?

If you're able to give an open and less ambiguous answer to the question above, I'm confident that you'd actually gain a lot more confidence in many people (myself included) here are who are considering leaving GoDaddy. From a customer's perspective, the question of "why" it happened, is critical in knowing how GoDaddy will actually attempt to prevent it from happening again.

 

[bmugford]

@Paul Nicks Your statement can be construed to read that GoDaddy may have discovered possible abuse within your own customer service. You mentioned that GoDaddy's customer service does in fact need to be improved, and if abuse is ever found moving forward, that you will "take action". Can you confirm and/or clarify for everyone here, whether there was (or was not) some form of internal abuse that ended up being a component of this particular case?

If you're able to give an open and less ambiguous answer to the question above, I'm confident that you'd actually gain a lot more confidence in many people (myself included) here are who are considering leaving GoDaddy. From a customer's perspective, the question of "why" it happened, is critical in knowing how GoDaddy will actually attempt to prevent it from happening again.

At best it was incompetence. It was clear from that one screenshot that "Lisa" @ GoDaddy was wrong about there being a court order in the first place. I am not sure if that started this entire mess, but it was at least part of it.

Brad

 

[barybadrinath]

Nope. The gross injustice was having millions of dollars of domains locked indefinitely in regards to a simple business dispute.

It is a further injustice that Brent had not been served, according to Indian court records, in over a year.

Brent moving his domains to another registrar has no impact on your lawsuit. The only thing you might lose is leverage that you should never have had in the first place.

Brad

Brent sir already appeared in indian court. After his appearance there is no need to serve him.
He may have won at this point but don't worry fight has not ended till yet.

 

[The Rover]

Abuse or not, it was clear from that one screenshot that "Lisa" @ GoDaddy was wrong about there being a court order in the first place. I am not sure if that started this entire mess, but it was at least part of it.

Brad

Yeah, that's part of it. But the continued ignoring of Brent's emails also greatly concerns me.