ICANN Sued Over Domain Front Running
February 26, 2008 | 1:07 pm | by t-blender |Rate It:
techCrunch.com: Network Solutions and ICANN are being sued over the “front running” domain registration practices that we covered last month.
“Network Solutions has forced millions of people to buy Internet domain names from them instead of cheaper competitors through a scheme that’s netted the firm millions of dollars,” according to the federal class action lawsuit filed by Kabateck Brown Kellner. The suit also alleges ICANN is guilty by association as its policies allow Network Solutions to front run.
For those not familiar with the practice, Network Solutions (and some other registrars) lock up domain names as soon as a user searches for them, taking them off the market and forcing users to use their service to register the name they want.
Man, oh man! It’s about time this happened. There are so few .com names available these days that it’s sickening. When you surf to the sites, they are all either owned by Netsol or some other cyber squatter that has no real use for them except to make money. Hopefully Netsol loses it’s ability to sell domains altogether, since they were doing it in bad faith.