Asian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Center (the ADNDRC) denied a UDRP on the domain name 6543.com
A domain which it appears was allegedly stolen from the complainant.
The Respondent didn’t file a response.
We have noted before that UDRP’s are not set up for the return of a stolen domain.
Here the complainant didn’t even allege a trademark right to the domain, not even a common law right.
What the panel did however seems to be to call out Godaddy.com the registrar of the domain.
On the other hand the panel actually publishes the customer (complainant’s) credit card number in the opinion which is pretty outrageous.
Here are the relevant facts and findings by the one member panel.
The Complainant in this case is 王松
The Respondent in this case is Wang yaohui.
The Complainant somehow cannot log on account in godaddy.com which is the domain agent of
the Complainant. The Complainant submitted relevant information and document via online claim procedure. However, after 40 emails had been sent out, the Complainant did not receive any valuable feedback from any departments in godaddy.com, including support, undo, change after 40 emails had been sent out in 15 days. Godaddy.com did not take the request seriously.
The Complainant is the account owner in godaddy from the very beginning, and the account trul y exists. The Complainant can manage the domain name until 28 th October 2012. Now the Complainant cannot log on the account with the notice invalid Email address. WHOIS information has be en modified in the account. As
the email password is as same as godaddy, it is perhaps stolen by hacker. The mails are all deleted. The Complainant soon later got back the E-mail box through google, but did not receive any mail from godaddy from November 2012.
The Complainant once took online payment service on July 2010 card No: XXXXX (the panel actually gives out the customers credit card number on the site.
and the Panel then goes on to tell Godaddy about “User safety :
Considering user safety, Godaddy should take more complicated info verification procedure when
user wants to do any changes in the account. The Complainant tried to reach the current holder, but failed by invalid phone number and no feedback via email.
The domain name 6543.com has been purchased from an
agent of sedo.com in June 2010, possession transition procedure
had been completed on 7 th July 2010. The Complainant once requested to godaddy for the info rmation on the current domain holder, but godaddy did not respond.
The Respondent failed to submit a Response before the deadline.
Unfortunately the Complainant failed to submit any evidence to prove that “6543.com” or “6543”
has been registered or used as trademark or service mark. It is also noted that “6543”, only an Arabic number, is not a distinctive identifier for any goods or services in the current case.
Accordingly, the Panel finds that the Complaint fails to satisfy the condition provided in Paragraph 4 (a) (iii) of the Policy. Since the Complainant needs to establish all three elements required under
the ICANN Policy, it follows that the Complainant’s request cannot be supported in this case.
To me the biggest shame is that it seems GoDaddy did not take the domain/account holder seriously due to his sub-standard english skills. Thing is he probably conveyed the problem to them just fine, but he was in Asia and using poor English so they didn’t care. If that is really the case then they should be ashamed of themselves. The guy was probably speaking in perfect grammer for his language. It’s not like he emailed GoDaddy in Chinese, they should have gotten it. Sorry if I have misread this here but that is what I gathered from this.
“On the other hand the panel actually publishes the customer (complainant’s) credit card number in the opinion which is pretty outrageous.”
ADNDRC is supposed to be a professional dispute resolution provider.
This type of personal information being listed in a publicly available dispute is ridiculous. There is absolutely no excuse for this.
I find it ironic that the panel lectures GoDaddy on “user safety” after making the CC # available to the world.
I am going to file a complaint with ICANN. This is totally unacceptable.
Brad
I just filed a complaint with ICANN. This is just not acceptable.
Releasing private information like this is not legal. ADNDRC could face some serious legal ramifications for their actions.
There is nothing ADNDRC can do to resolve this. The information is already out there.
Not only does the information need to be redacted immediately, ADNDRC needs to face serious sanctions for their violations of public trust.
Brad
While I recall handling two alleged domain theft cases involving non-English speakers in my past work, I can’t emphasize enough how incredibly difficult they were. I spoke real slow, asked questions via examples (i.e. do you mean exactly this?), even suggested (as politely yet clearly as possible) looking for English-speaking loved ones or friends or send detailed emails.
Long story short: me and my then-bosses did everything possible for those non-English speakers who claimed their domain names were stolen, but the language barriers just made it real hard (if not impossible) to verify their claims. I don’t know if they were ever resolved after I left.
If Go Daddy’s experience with this dispute is similar to what I described, it’s probably more like they tried but just felt they couldn’t do more under the circumstances. Unless more details come to light (which Go Daddy obviously won’t share), unfortunately we’ll just never really know.
I guess the question would be how does a company like Godaddy react to such requests when communication is difficult? Each person they put on the supposed hack is time and money spent so I’m sure an executive decision. If Godaddy is willing to accept orders from China they should hire Mandarin speakers to respond, they can certainly afford it.