‘Scandalous’ decision in CM.com re-allocation raises several questions

CM.com

The decision on the case of the two letter domain CM.com being reallocated to the persons that allegedly owned it more than a dozen years ago is definitely scandalous.

As Domain Name Wire mentioned, a lawsuit against Network Solutions brought by a group of people alleging to be the original owners of CM.com, has resulted in getting the domain re-registered.

In other words, the domain ended its reserved status at the Registry and was re-registered, with a registration date of 1/16/2015. (date corrected)

The lawsuit document, however, contains at least one critical inconsistency, which refers to Satoshi Shimoshita as the domain’s owner since May 2002.

In fact, Shimoshita, a respectable domain investor from Japan who resides in Saigon, Vietnam, only acquired the domain in late September 2004, according to DomainTools records.

Shimoshita announced the acquisition of the domain CreativeMedia.com in a post on DNForum, on August 30th, 2003. He stated that he although he had negotiated with the CM.com owners for the domain, he was unable to complete an acquisition at the time:

“I successful buy this domain. But I unsuccessful buy CM.com Spent 3 weeks nagotiation, fixed price, but finally I gave up…. I felt something wrong… seller’s action. Smell fishy…”

More than a year later, Satoshi Shimoshita acquired CM.com from the person that owned it, a Michael Berry with an email address of  mberry@SAN.RR.COM, resident of San Diego, California.

The domain CM.com displayed a San Diego address as early as 1998, under the control of a company called CYBERMICRO. This Archive.org capture confirms it.

Furthermore, the domain Cybermicro.com was under the control of the same person, Michael Berry, as late as August 21, 2003 and since at least 2001.

In other words, the CM.com holder and Cybermicro.com company managers were one and the same. The oldest Archive.org records of CM.com go back to December 6th, 1998 and it is clear that the business controlling CM.com is indeed Cybermicro.

We reached out to Satoshi Shimoshita regarding his loss of CM.com to Dotster, the registrar that removed CM.com from his possession, alleging it was the source of mass unsolicited emails (spam.)

Part of what he disclosed to us was the following:

“It looks CM.com transferred from ICANN to some person. 

Dotster.com deleted CM.com from their registry without any notification to me. 

Of cause I complaint Dotster.com but nothing result at that time.  I did not sell, I did not delete by myself, even I paied renew fees until 2020.

But my mistake was do not action for take back CM.com strongly.  Now I knew CM.com relesed to someone from ICANN This is very strange. Because I was last owner of CM.com”

Satoshi Shimoshita possesses a good control of the English language, but it is very likely that once faced with legal mumbo-jumbo and other communication from the Registrar, he was unable to engage in a timely response to secure his domain asset.

We will publish any other communication that we receive from Satoshi Shimoshita on the subject.

It is indeed scary, that a legal motion alleging that an asset was stolen 13 years ago, can effectively remove a priceless domain name from the possession of the current domain owner.

 

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