DNS: April 2007 Archives

Since ICANN Lisbon, EURid has been taking lots of abuse from all corners due to their business practices. Michele has talked about the conduct of EURid Staff during their session at Lisbon and John McCormac also has plenty to say about EURid Incompetence. One older post that was pointed out to me has really caught my eye. It is by Phill Parker and is simply entitled EURid Are Pure Evil. One of the EURid registrar rules is that you may only have one connection to the EPP server at any given time. However, certain registrars are gaming the system by getting "Registrars" accredited who haven't even got a website or any trading presence. These virtual accredited registrars are then used for additional connections to the EPP server giving those who follow the rules no chance. A quick bit of Googling led me to Commission Regulation (EC) No 874/2004 of 28 April 2004 available here. To quote the second paragraph of Article 4 of the above document:

The procedure for the accreditation of registrars shall be deter- mined by the Registry and shall be reasonable, transparent and non-discriminatory, and shall ensure effective and fair condi- tions of competition.

I'm by no means a legal expert, but what Phill describes seems like a very clear cut breach of the above paragraph. This only took me a couple of minutes to find, and I'm betting that it's only the very tip of the iceberg. What other EU Regulations are EURid breaching on a daily basis? It has become fairly obvious that EURid are totally incapable of handling a gTLD, I'll let Michele tell of why multiyear registrations are out :) Why are the European Commission not stepping in and asking serious questions of EURid?