Attorney David Weslow was recently interviewed on Webmaster Radio, by Cyber Law and Business Report expert Bennet Kelley.
The discussion spanned almost an hour of covering the reasons behind an ongoing spike in domain theft and assorted cybercrime, pointing out the Chinese domain market as a factor.
Domain Gang imagery used in the video.
David Weslow mentioned on the subject of the current status of domain theft:
“It seems to me that there’s a high likelihood of an increase, at least in the short term, the value of domain names particularly on Chinese market places, where domain names are frequently sold, and short number and letter domain names are frequently sold for significant sums, I think that’s leading to a lot of this, and the fact that a lot of domain name owners don’t have multi-factor authentication and that registrars, in my mind, are not publicizing the importance of multi-factor authentication as much as they could be, I think means that it’s likely that this is going to increase.”
Bennet Kelley stated that there are registrars that turn a blind eye to this, asking if there is some type of administrative consequence such as loss of license.
David Weslow’s response on the matter was:
“There are one or two registrars that are frequently involved, they are frequently the receiving registrars in China, and I would think that that’s something that could be subject of a compliance complaint with ICANN. ICANN has a staff that monitors registrar accreditation compliance under the registrar accreditation agreement, the fact that one or two registrars are always the gaining registrars in cases of domain theft and they are not cooperative with losing registrars, and returning domain names, seems like something that should be the subject of ICANN compliance.”
In the past year or so, many stolen domains end up with Ename, a Chinese domain registrar where domain thieves often transfer the domain names after stealing them.
For the full Webmaster Radio interview podcast, titled “Combating Domain Theft with David Weslow” click here.
You can also watch a six minute excerpt below.
Thanks for this, Ename never replied to any of my emails while my name was stolen
HD – You’re not alone. 😉
Thanks for the shout out! i’m a big fan.