GoDaddy + Cheap .info registrations = One Trademark Clusterphuck

Once in a blue moon, uber-registrar GoDaddy attempts to further improve on its 40 million domain registrations by offering some really cheap deals.

One such deal was for 99 cent dot .info domains; a TLD that hasn’t gotten much steam since its launch a decade ago.

Thanks to that deal a year ago, almost 1.5 million domains were added. It turns out, the majority of these cheap domains were registered with the broadcasting of spam in mind.

Come renewal time, those bulk registrants who kept track of their domains surely managed to dump them, either by selling or removing the dreadful automatic renewal option from the GoDaddy domain manager menu.

Unfortunately, there were some that did not; by registering thousands of domains, a lot of which were blatant trademark violations, they got spanked in a much deserved way.

Not only does GoDaddy systematically acknowledge justified complaints of trademark holders, but they also have a strict policy on repeat offenders: Behave or GTFO.

In one such “cry me a river” case unfolding on popular domain forum DNForum.com one such violator is being forced to move 15,000 .info domains out of GoDaddy; a lot of which were – surprise, surprise – trademark violations.

The account holder was given 30 days to move the domains out before his account gets fully suspended.

Conclusion: While GoDaddy might have the legal advantage since all of these points about abuse are covered in the small print part of the registration agreement, they certainly added fuel to the fire by offering such useless and cheap domain registrations at below cost.

It’s clear that the intention of GoDaddy was to lock down users for long term profit, because full price would be charged at renewal time.

Still, we have no sympathy for trademark violators – so good riddance to those 15,000 .info domains and their $100,000 renewal price tag.

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