Vietnamese Man Registers TM Domain, Points It To Porn; Company Agrees To Pay $50K & Calls Police

Well not your typical domain story.

A Vietnamese man Nguyen Trong Khoahas was summoned by police after a company, Eurowindow Holding accused him of buying four domain names related to the company and directing users of one of the sites to porn in “order to pressure it to buy the domains at exorbitant prices”.=

According to the story that appeared in tuoitrenews.vn, Khoa registered the domain nameseurowindowholding.com, and linked it to a sex site (he also registered eurowindowholding.vn, eurowindowholding.com.vn, and eurowindowholding.net) and informed an employee of the company, Eurowindow Holding that he wanted $50,000 for the 4 domains.

The company agreed to pay the $50K then called the police which told Nguyen to visit them at southern headquarters of the Ministry of Public Security in Ho Chi Minh City.

“Khoa was accused of seizing assets and spreading depraved cultural products”

“I just wanted to alert them that they have neglected the protection of their brand name online via the domain name,” he said.

The company claimed that Khoa has intentionally directed eurowindowholding.com to a porn website to “create pressure to force the company to re-buy the domain name.”

“This is not only extortion but also a spread of depraved cultural products, that’s why our company reported the case to the Ministry of Public Security,” she said.

“Khoa asserted that he has not violated any Vietnamese laws in directing the eurowindowholding.com to a porn website, as it is an international domain name.”

“Should they want to sue me, they have to take me to an international court,” he said.

“It’s also wrong to accuse me of spreading the depraved cultural products as I don’t own that sex website as well as storing or spreading pornography.”

“Khoa said he has bought thousands of domain names, mostly international, as a hobby”.

“I didn’t buy to resell. I only wanted to consult companies and transfer the domain names to them as gifts rather than hoarding.”

“According to lawyer Ha Hai from the Ho Chi Minh City Law Association, the domain name registration is done under the ‘first come, first served’ scheme.

“You can register a domain name without having to prove your legality to own that name,” he said.

There is thus a phenomenon in which people buy the domain names in relation to several individuals or organizations or the geographic indications of localities under hoarding purposes.

“If the real individuals or organizations want to use such domain names, they have to re-buy from the speculators at exorbitant prices,” he explained.

“But there are no penalties for this as it is only considered a civil dispute,” he added.

Earlier Khoa also bought the legendeecoffee.com, in relation to a coffee product of Trung Nguyen Group, and directed it to sex.com, a renowned porn website.”

The story isn’t clear if the police’s charges are still pending against the Khoa but it seems the Khoa still has the domain names.

About Michael Berkens