Nominet wins battle against domain scammers

Two Australians who sent out bogus letters urging domain owners to pay a fee have been fined nearly a million pounds

Two scam artists who duped victims with bogus demands for domain name registration have been fined AU$2.3m (£980,000) by an Australian court.

Brad Norrish and Chesley Rafferty copied personal information from the Whois listings of Nominet, the dot-uk domain registrar. They then contacted around 50,000 domain owners and told them they must pay a fee or risk losing their domain.

The pair were found guilty of "flagrant" disregard for Nominet's copyright and ordered to pay AU$1.3m in damages to the registrar, after it was forced to close down its Whois database. They were also hit with AU$1m in costs.

Lesley Cowley, chief executive of Nominet, said the company takes "protection of our intellectual property and copyright ownership very seriously".

Cowley said in a statement the need to protect its customers is also paramount and praised the international co-operation which had secured the conviction.

He said: "By fighting, and winning, this case we are very clearly showing that scamming is a serious industry issue which will not be tolerated."

Story URL: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/itmanagement/0,1000000308,39245442,00.htm