As part of the recent redesign, Dotster has lowered the price of their shared hosting account to $5.75/month. At the same time, they are offering free domain registration with any hosting purchase. This means that shrewd domain investors can purchase domain names for less than the registry and ICANN fees.

Of course you will have to cancel your hosting account shortly after it is provisioned, and transfer your domains to your preferred registrar, but if you are looking to save  a couple bucks then this is the promotion for you.

The Dotster coupon code is “freedom15″ in case you want to give it a try. I opened four new accounts to test, but setting up four hosting plans under the same account would probably work. Drop me a comment if it works for you.

There were three major remodels last week: Sedo, Dotster, and Dynadot. While the reviews have been mixed, I would say that Dynadot was the most successful of the bunch and not just because they were the only company to leave a login form on the homepage.

Sedo

The largest of the three companies–both in terms of revenues and employees–they made the most dramatic changes. They simplified the homepage, added photos of smiling women to every page, and changed their javascript menus to be more stylish. Unfortunately, the new menus are impossibly difficult to use. The site is still slow with some pages (“Statistics” tab under “Domain Parking”) taking 10 seconds to load, possibly because their web servers are in Europe which makes it slow for US customers. With simplicity comes complexity, as it now takes me two additional clicks to reach the parking “Overview” page. Unfortunately, the default page (“Statistics”) under “Domain Parking” is also the slowest page. I timed how long it took me to get to the “Overview” page at 22 seconds after initially typing in the Sedo homepage URL.

One of Sedo’s challenges has long been their ability to keep currency punctuation and the URL consistent while browsing their website. Even now the “Price” dropdown on the domain search page and parking “Overview” page use the German punctuation instead of English. Despite minor bugs like this, I give Sedo a lot of credit for customizing their website. I am aware of many US-based websites in the domain industry that do not give the option of German punctuation.

While I’m not super happy about the website operations for parking customers, the homepage has definitely improved by changing focus from the small ticket domain auctions to end-user domain buyers. With their high volume of buyers, I would expect these changes to improve their sales numbers. I think a lot more could be done to better accommodate domain buyers, to help them navigate the huge number of domains that Sedo has listed but that’s better explored in another article.

Dotster

With a history of redesigns that added unnecessary complexity and bugs that are subsequently never fixed, this redesign (version 7) continues that trend. Where the last redesign marginalized the bulk domain name search with bugs and obfuscation, this redesign removes the bulk domain search functionality from the homepage and leaves unfixed the “select all” bug created in version 6 that adds “taken” domains to your shopping cart.

They also updated their logo to be more 3D by adding a shadow, and thinned out the font:

Old Logo

New Logo

The new simplified homepage is a huge improvement over the last version and places web hosting as the primary product offered. Domain registrars have increasingly relied on webhosting to increase profit margins in an industry where registry fees are high and price competition among registrars is tight.

Like Sedo, they removed the login form from the homepage and placed all design efforts at attracting new customers. Unfortunately they seem to have messed up the Account Management Control Panel:

Dotster Bug

Dynadot

The Dynadot redesign included a new logo, a slightly redesigned homepage, and an increase in registration prices. There was no real change to the functionality of the site, the most significant change in functionality was the consolidation of marketing boxes along the right side of the homepage. The reason I liked the Dynadot redesign the most was because they did not make it more difficult for existing customers to use the website, and the new logo is an improvement.

Old Logo

New Logo

GoDaddy has responded to Eolas’s Tuesday announcement of their filing a patent infringement lawsuit. Elizabeth Driscoll, Vice-President of Public Relations for GoDaddy told me,

“We have not seen the lawsuit and, therefore, cannot comment on it.  However, we are unaware of the basis for any such claims and we will defend the case vigorously.”

Judging by the character of the other 21 defendants in the case Eolas will have quite a bit of fight on their hands in addition to GoDaddy. But right now that is probably not Eolas’s biggest concern. Their most dangerous adversary is Bernard Bilski.

The Bilski case, primarily known for the potential to invalidate thousands of business method patents, has the potential to upend the Eolas’s gravy train by severely limiting the scope of software patents. The timing of this lawsuit is no accident when considering oral arguments before the Supreme Court of the United State in the Bilski case are less than one month away.

Texas company Eolas Technologies has filed a federal lawsuit against domain name registrar GoDaddy and 22 other companies alleging infringement of two patents involving embedded web applications and AJAX.

Eolas is famous for winning $565 million from Microsoft in 2004 before having its patent reaffirmed by the USPTO twice. The history of their litigation and patent reaffirmations have given Eolas the confidence to take on some of the largest US companies, at the same time striking fear in those same companies.

There is no word yet from GoDaddy with their take on the matter, but litigation of this manner can be settled quickly or drag on for decades.

Many observers have labeled Eolas as a “patent troll,” defined by wikipedia as “… a company that enforces its patents … in a manner considered unduly aggressive or opportunistic, often with no intention to manufacture or market the patented invention.” On Eolas’s website under “Products” they mostly list patents, not products.

The entire list of defendants includes Adobe, Amazon.com, Apple, Argosy Publishing, Blockbuster, CDW, Citigroup, Ebay, Frito-Lay, GoDaddy, Google, J.C. Penney, JP Morgan Chase & Co., New Frontier Media, Office Depot, Perot Systems, Playboy, Rent-A-Center, Staples, Sun Microsystems, Texas Instruments, Yahoo! and YouTube.

One of the curses of using SnapNames is receiving domains at a large number of different registrars. And one of my big challenges is transferring those domains to a preferred registrar. I let one of my favorite domains expire by mistake, AmericanSoulmates.com, and was forced to fill out a paper form and pay a ransom of US$155 to have it reinstated.

I’ve experienced the “redeem” functionality of a number of registrars, each with their own quirks. However, Melbourne IT definitely is the quirkiest.

After OnlineNIC refused to show up at the legal proceedings that resulted in the largest cybersquatting decision in history, I speculated that their decision to ignore the federal lawsuit may have been based on not having any U.S. presence.

Looking up OnlineNIC’s Oakland, California address raised more questions than answers for me, so I thought I would drop by to check out the location that is listed in their whois record.

The building, 351 Embarcadero East, is located in an industrial area of Oakland. The property is bordered by a cement factory and an empty lot, and it looks like the type of place where junkyard dogs are used for security. I looked around the building and found many businesses listed but no evidence of OnlineNIC or any other Internet company for that matter. Here are a few photos:

While it’s not uncommon for businesses to have unusual locations in high-rent areas such as the San Francisco Bay area, it’s interesting that a company accused of owning almost a million infringing domains would use such a discreet location.

OnlineNIC is in trouble with Verizon resulting in the largest cybersquatting decision ever. According to a Verizon press release, the damages are $33.15 million because of 663 domain infringing names. The Chinese-based registrar did not participate in the federal court proceedings, resulting in a default ruling, perhaps due to the question of whether or not Verizon chose the proper venue to bring such a case. If OnlineNIC has no assets in the U.S. then they may have little to lose from a U.S. court.

Verizon is not new to discussions of trademark infringing domain names. Domain Name Wire pointed out the hypocrisy of Verizon bringing a cybersquatting case when they are guilty of redirecting URLs that infringe on others’ trademarks.

OnlineNIC is also known as China-Channel.com and while their whois record lists an Oakland, California address, they have a Chinese phone number.

ICANN has delayed ESTDomains de-accreditation because the troubled registrar submitted documents to ICANN indicating that CEO Vladimir Tsastsin was removed as CEO on June 25. In a letter yesterday ESTDomains raised additional reasons to delay their de-accreditation; they tried to remove Vladimir before his conviction, ICANN documents do not state that registrars must notify ICANN of executive management changes, and his conviction has been appealed to the Estonian supreme court so his conviction has been stayed according to Estonian law.

It’s hard to say which direction the de-accreditation will now take. The contact information on the ICANN website indicates the new CEO’s name and contact information, but what I am most curious about is what legal duties they have to the State of Delaware regarding changes to a directorship. I read through some of the Delaware corporation law and the ICANN Accreditation Agreement but was unable to find any provisions that require official notification of an executive management change.

With the recent demise of ESTDomains due to alleged sketchy behavior, where are all the spammers going? They seem to be headed for OnlineNIC because they are the friendliest registrar to phishers and spam.I have received more than ten registrar phishing e-mails in two days and it appears to be the same group perpetrating the scam using OnlineNIC (or OnlineNIC reseller China Channel) as their registrar. Here is the first e-mail:

Then I received this e-mail today from someone else at my company:

It definitely raises questions to see their numbers of new registrations shooting past Godaddy (courtesy of webhosting.info):

The whois records for both phishing domains point to Yuriy Shestakov with the same contact information. The DNS servers then server up a variety of possible web servers which appear to be located on compromised computers around the world (The University of Queensland, and West Central Wireless, but mostly at Comcast). While the eNom phishing sites were shut off, the NetworkSolutions phishing sites are still working. How many people will lose their domains because of this scam?

Even though I find Register.com’s archaic requirements to speak to a representative during abbreviated operating hours to be annoying and a big inconvenience, it should be no surprise that this style of phishing attempts is not targetting that registrar.

ESTDomains has lost its accreditation after CEO Vladimir Tsastsin was convicted of various cyber-crime charges, according to the Washington Post. The funniest quote was from Chris Barton of McAfee, “I don’t think anyone in their right mind is going to want to take on these domain names”.

That certainly raises the question, if nobody wants the 281,000 domains then what will happen to them?