news Sony forgets to renew domain name, takes down online gaming service

[jdab]

Sony forgot to renew a key domain name, SonyOnline.net, which resulted in an outage on its popular Sony Online Entertainment game network found at SOE.com.

Full story: http://domainnamewire.com/2014/07/16/soe-down-sony-online-entertainment/

Bit embarrassing!

 

[buyselldoms]

You would have thought they would have some form of domain portfolio management. Not just relying on emails.

 

[DnEbook]

The old tech guy probably moved on and 'forgot to mention' to renew the domain …. but hey you're a tech company …..you'll figure it out

 

[Mr.Natwarlal]

Not a big deal.. Google also lost feedburner.jp

 

[buyselldoms]

Not a big deal.. Google also lost feedburner.jp

Its not the end of the world, yes, but it caused an outage, so significant.

feedburner.jp isn't on the same level

I remember the time when Microsoft forgot to renew passport.net! haha

 

[alien51]

I would have thought big companies are paying brand protection agencies to handle these domain issues like renewals. It would have been impossible for this to happen. Not only would they call up the company and make sure a human being employee has been properly informed of the expiration, but to some extent the brand protection agency would assume ownership of the domain and keep the DNS active, while these human lapses are being sorted out. That way, downtime for that domain would never happen.

 

[jdab]

I would have thought big companies are paying brand protection agencies to handle these domain issues like renewals. It would have been impossible for this to happen. Not only would they call up the company and make sure a human being employee has been properly informed of the expiration, but to some extent the brand protection agency would assume ownership of the domain and keep the DNS active, while these human lapses are being sorted out. That way, downtime for that domain would never happen.

I think someone needs to tell them about autorenewing domains :P

 

[alien51]

Autorenew is a no-brainer, yes. lol

 

[Kate]

Apparently some domains rely on the good will of one single individual, and that individual relies on the courtesy E-mail reminders. Scary.
Mediaset is even worse, they lost their name for the second time I think, and couldn't even get it back.

 

[Paul]

'Twas a grand day for Xbox fans. That's what Sony gets for hogging the Destiny beta.

 

[buyselldoms]

Autorenew is a no-brainer, yes. lol

Yeah, but you would think someone like Sony would periodically max out the registration on their domains instead of extending registration by a year or two, (or forgetting to!) In this case it was solely a domain used for DNS rather than an active website, which is probably why they saw no worth keeping it... haha

 

[Paul]

Yeah, but you would think someone like Sony would periodically max out the registration on their domains instead of extending registration by a year or two, (or forgetting to!) In this case it was solely a domain used for DNS rather than an active website, which is probably why they saw no worth keeping it... haha

Yeah, no worth at all... their new PS3 line doesn't completely depend on it or anything. Noob mistake!

 

[Mystic Nobles Media]

I got a TV stations domain 7-8 years ago a 4L.com It was back in the day before they disabled all the services when it expired and I picked it up in a godaddy auction. It ended on a Saturday I set the name servers to redirect to a developed site I had at the time and come Monday I was getting calls like crazy $2500 cash and two commercials later they had their domain back. They had lost all their email access and everything

 

[fencer]

I also picked up a large domain like that, but what to do with it?

 

[TMZHosting]

Got to understand there is always a human behind everything. Mistakes happen .

- Daniel

 

[jdab]

Here's a question for any NamePros out there - if the domain they dropped contained a trademark, could they 'by law' just snap it back up again?

 

[Dave_Z]

Here's a question for any NamePros out there - if the domain they dropped contained a trademark, could they 'by law' just snap it back up again?

Not necessarily. Some laws and policies enable trademark holders to get the domain name from someone under limited circumstances, such as likelihood of confusion and bad faith, but that's just about it.

A catch is if the domain name bears a unique and/or famous trademark, such as Sony. The moment anyone uses a Sony-domain name to commercially exploit its trademark namesake is the moment Sony will surely take action.

 

[vdonline]

people make mistake, even if they are big people. It's normal I think.

 

[baseballworld]

No big deal they drop it and can get it back either way.

 

[ramkumaritrvs]

TataDocomo.com also forgot to renewal :P

Why these companies shouldn't hire some domainer's? :P

 

[matrigaldo]

Because you can't pay a yearly salary for a one-day job :D

 

[jdab]

Why big companies don't just set auto-renew or just purchase 10+ years worth of renewals I will never know.

 

[lock]

Coming up for the best time of the year for it CEO takes a Christmas vacation that year before was busy registering domains..