Responding to lawsuits is expensive.
I keep preaching about how providing whois privacy services isn’t free for domain registrars, and here’s another example.
Timothy Sykes has just sued Moniker (pdf) in federal district court to find out the identity of the owner of PennyStockAlerts.com, which is protected by whois privacy. Skyes is only after the identify of the owner, not Moniker itself. But the company will have to respond. That costs money.
Skyes wants the identity because of alleged defamation.
He says that the registrant for the domain uses the alias “Stock Psycho”, but after an “exhaustive investigation”, that person’s true identity is unknown.
A little tip for Sykes’ lawyer: if you look at the historical whois records for the domain from last year I think you’ll figure out who owns it. And you might check out a little research tool called Google. It’s amazing what you can turn up.
If the lawyer already had the answer he’d have to charge less money.
Thanks for the article and the link!
Obviously buried in the contract language is a clause that indemnifies and holds harmless as well as giving the right to offset and charge the registrant for any legal fees. Or it should be there.
Now of course this only helps the registrar if there is an asset (or customer) worth going after.
Additionally I think that moniker probably simply told them that in order to release this info a lawsuit is what they would need to do to give moniker a cover for releasing the privacy info. If the owner of the domain doesn’t agree to cover legal costs moniker will probably release the info. Unless they want to prove a point and use this as an example to show that they don’t (in order to gain more business).
Apparently “exhaustive investigation” didn’t include hiring a domain consultant, LOL. Andrew, Jamie Zoch, Adam Strong, and a whole bunch of other smart ‘Domain Detective’ folks we all know could’ve helped Mr. Sykes get a fast answer to his question, and for way less than Sykes probably paid his lawyer.
Thanks for the mention Bill!
Should we have a little fun with Tim for costing our fine friends at Moniker some money? What can I dig up…
🙂
Just kidding Tim!
I’m not really sure Moniker even has to respond. If they replied back to Mr. Sykes that they need a court order to reveal that information, then that’s precisely what he has to do to get that.
Like some (if not many or all) registrars, Moniker will give that upon receiving an order from a court of competent jurisdiction, anyway. Unless I missed it somewhere, I don’t recall seeing Moniker advertising, say, they’ll protect your information even against arguably frivolous actions against the registrant. (or something like that…)
Then if the court grants Mr. Sykes’ request, then he just serves it on Moniker, Moniker verifies it, then complies. That’s it.
If Mr. Sykes, say, wants to hold Moniker liable, then that’s the time Moniker has to respond.