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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Satoshi should have sued Dotster/Domain.com/Endurance if they indeed deleted the domain.
If any domainer still keeps domains with Dotster/Domain.com/Endurance they are supporting a registrar which deletes million dollar domains.
It is possible that some spammers used cm.com in spoofed email addresses when sending spam.
I have experience with spammers using a generic domain partly owned by me to spoof the email address in their spam email to hide the real source of spam.
Domains should NEVER be deleted for any complaints.
If a domain gets complaints it should be de-actived from the registrar side by removing nameservers.
If Dotster/Domain.com/Endurance deleted cm.com then they are completely clueless/ anti-domainer and do NOT care about their customers.
Any domainer keeping domains at Dotster/Domain.com/Endurance risks all their domains if their group of registrars has a policy of deleting domains which receive complaints.
If the facts on your article about Michael Berry / Cybermicro are correct then it raises several questions about the court case brought by Branded Holding Group through which they got a judge to give them control of cm.com
If the cm.com domain has been owned By Michael Berry / Cybermicro since 1998 and Satoshi bought cm.com from him then the claims by Branded Holding Group seem very suspect and it seems they might have hoodwinked the judge into giving them a million dollar domain.
Exactly, on Dec 6 1998 CM.com registrant was Cybermicro, Michael Berry.
Then, unless BHG controlled Cybermicro at that time (we have no evidence of that), then BHG and Mr. Roland Chemtob made false statements in their lawsuit, declaring that between 1998 and Jan 2001 they were the legitimate registrant/owner of CM.com.
Their statements have not been duly verified during the litigation?
And unlike what BHG said, from Archive I see no ownership changes for CM.com between Dec 2000 and Jan 2001…
Lots of these two and three letter domains were hijacked, resold, and resold again to hide the thievery. Not sure if this is one of them but very well may be, and why one “owner” will not try to fight to get it back and taken from him.
Interesting case!
Nice find, @ DomainGang!
It is nice for those of us who don’t have a paid DomainTools account to hear the results of your research . . .
Just one request which I never do, but for the record, the new creation date is the 16th, not the 19th. It’s easy to invert them. Would you update your article with the exact creation date of 01-16-2015? Thanx. 🙂
Thank you, Louise.
“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.”
Uh, not to be hostile but you guys the ones who make tons of posts about stolen domains telling us not to buy them because we would be purchasing stolen goods.
John – Owners of domains that have been stolen don’t wait 13 years to file a case at court. Especially when the domain was removed from the lawful owner’s account of 10 years without any due process.
Do you have any important information you’d like to share or are you just playing devil’s advocate?
BTW, I noticed the CM.com case in 2013.
In Oct 2013 I sent ICANN a formal info request and I got a weird reply.
You can find all docs and my comments on TheDomains.com thread and on DNW.
😉
I just happened upon this story by accident today, and I’m shocked. None of the allegations regarding how I came to own CM.COM are even remotely true. I purchased that domain name for a few thousand bucks from an individual, not a company, and I used it legitimately for my business FOR YEARS until the business name no longer used the “CM” acronym. I then sold it to Satoshi who had contacted me several times prior about it. If his registrar took issue with things he was using it for, that’s one thing. But to have it taken away from him and then assigned back to someone who supposedly owned it before me is ridiculous. The domain was never stolen. I was NEVER contacted about this by anyone, and never noticed or summonsed or asked a single question about a lawsuit or court hearings where my name and a false, ludicrous allegation that I somehow “stole” the domain was their key evidence. My contact information is about as easy to find online as it gets, but apparently the truth would have collapsed their ridiculous claim. If anyone knows how to get in touch with Satoshi, please let me know.
Michael – Which allegations are you referring to?
The article describes exactly how Satoshi bought the domain CM.com from you, and that you used it for CyberMicro for a long time prior. This establishes the fact that you were the seller of the domain, and that Satoshi did not acquire it from someone else, e.g. a thief.
You can reach Satoshi at info@toho.com.
I’m referring to the allegations in the ridiculous lawsuit, where they claim I stole it from them. Pure nonsense, which is clearly why I never appeared on any witness list nor was my deposition taken. Had they done so they never would have slipped this past the judge.
CM.com appears to have been sold. It now points to a live web site as seen at https://www.cmtelecom.com/about-cm