.eu Domain Registration

The new .eu domains went on sale sometime around December 2005. Being new and also a 2 character TLD (Top level domain) I fancied a couple, despite not really having any idea of what I wanted to use them for. The process for registration was extraordinarily protracted with registrants not knowing if they had a secured a domain name until April 2006. This supposedly allowed time for verification of corporate applications and those with ‘rights’ to a certain domain name. Because of this peculiar registration method, I decided to try for 5 domains:-
anon.eu
c2.eu
mix.eu
pseudonym.eu
zax.eu

When April arrived I was surprised to discover that I hadn’t secured a single one of them. So who had? Time for some whois checks on anon.eu (being first alphabetically):-

Domain
Name anon
Status REGISTERED
Registered 07 April 2006
Last update 07 April 2006 11:37

Registrant
Name Terry Healy
Organisation PX Publishing Ltd
Language English
Address Unit 28c, Newbattle Abbey College Annexe
EH223LJ Dalkeith, Edinburgh
Midlothian
United Kingdom
Phone +44.01316636989
Email landrush@pool.com

Registrar technical contacts
Name Ben Levac
Organisation AusRegistry
Language English
Address 26 Auriga Dr.
K2E 8B7 Ottawa
Ontario
Canada
Phone +1.6132252000
Fax +1.6138200777
Email ben@momentous.ca

So a company called PX Publishing has succeeded in laying claim to a domain name of anon.eu. I smell a rat. So who are PX Publishing? Time for a Google.

Disney Enterpries, Inc. v. PX Publishing Ltd. A legal dispute between PX Publishing (of same address) and Disney Enterprises, Inc. over a domain name of desperatehousewives.com. PX Publishing were ordered to give up the domain name.

Thomas Cook UK Limited-v-P.X. Publishing Ltd A dispute over the domain www.club1830.co.uk. PX Publishing lost this one too and had to hand over the domain rights to Thomas Cook.

Harcourt, Inc. v. PX Publishing Ltd. Another domain dispute, this time regarding gohrw.com. This one even cites the previous cases:

Respondent has engaged in a pattern of registering domain names to prevent trademark owners from reflecting their respective marks in a corresponding domain name, and has done so with the subject domain name. (See the decision in Disney Enterprises, Inc. v. PX Publishing Ltd., National Arbitration Forum, Case No. FA506604 and Thomas Cooke UK Limited v. PX Publishing Ltd., Nominet, DRS 02568).

PX Publishing lost this one too. Anyone noticing a pattern here? This is what PX Publishing do all the time! No doubt these instances are only the tip of the iceburg as very few private individuals are going to try and contest ownership of a domain name.

My next discovery is www.wankland.com. Further description is hardly required, but the legal contact address for this site is legal@pxpublishing.com. The same is true of www.projectvoyeur.com and www.too-blue.com. No doubt there are loads of examples but I don’t want to look further!

Maybe I’m being cynical, but wtf was the .eu registration process supposed to be about if the first domain name I check out has an unscrupulous company like this behind it? They might as well have just made it a free-for-all, first-come-first-served process and subsequently resolved disputes in the usual manner.

Of the others:-
c2.eu is pending recipt of documentation to support a claim to it.
mix.eu is pending receipt of documentation to support a claim for it.
pseudonym.eu went to www.domcollect.com who trade domain names.
zax.eu went to a porn company called Joyweb.

Not a single one went to a private individual and companies snapped up as many as they could get their hands on, regardless of whether they had a proper claim to it or not. What a mess.