the world is what you know - NO MORE SECRETS

 
What happened to voxnyc.com?


UPDATED 10/06/03

I followed up on Yun Ye's (the alias of the one person behind Ultimate Search) over-taking of voxnyc.com and in the process acquired an insight into the lucrative world of domain brokering, where millions are made, but the Internet is spammed with useless advertisements for online casinos, insurance, etc. in the process. Those ads are sold through advertising services, who then sell those pay-per-click ads on "stolen" domain names (Ultimate Search alone has about 50'000 generating six-figures per day). It is a never-ending money stream for those few involved in a business, that can only be described as the e-mail spammers equivalent for the world wide web.

The problem exists because ICANN's Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) is written in such a mushy way, that it can be interpreted as legalizing any transfer of a domain name that once belonged to somebody else:

"The most that Complainant asserts is that Respondent has a pattern of registering domain names that once belonged to other parties and this is not an actionable offense under the UDRP."

They key word is once, as domains are often grabbed during the changing of the hosting provider or renewal of registration. Disregarding the webmasters who don't renew their registration in time because of various reaons, this on-going practice should be regulated by the ICANN.

I contacted different advertisers on the defunct voxnyc.com website and all of those that answered buy their advertising space from findwhat.com, which is affiliated with Ultimate Search. I tried to contact Yun Ye by e-mail or by phone about buying back voxnyc.com. It must make too much money, so he won't sell it, because I never got a reply. Congrats Vox, you must have had quite the traffic to voxnyc.com!

---

For the last couple of days voxnyc.com seemed to be having DNS problems and now the new domain owner (namesecure.com) shows a standard webpage by Ultimate Search, a Hong Kong based domain brokering firm. Two scenarios are possible: The domain expired and "Ultimate Search" registered it automatically with their automated scripts checking for expired whois records. Or, the domain has been fraudently transferred to a new domain owner, e.g. through forged owner documents, as happened before with sex.com as a prominent example.

For once, however, it looks like the government is not involved in censoring a critical voice on the Internet. It rather seems to be a case of corporate greed, as the business model of domain brokering includes using the hits meant for the original hijacked website as capital. So stop giving hits to them by visiting voxync.com, and update your links to www.voxfux.com!

An anonymous source wrote the following at memes.org:

voxnyc.com down will move to voxfux.com
" Netsol/verisign/(nsa) has refused to accept payments for the voxnyc.com website. I will move all the contents from voxnyc to voxfux which is still registered. Voxnyc is currently disputed and it seems there is no chance that I will be able able to gain control of it soon. It's been a very frustrating battle with netsol. Thanks."

Netsol and some other domain-name registrars have very poor security in place for handling domain name transfers, so it seems that Netsol is the facilitator, and Ultimate Search the domain-grabbing thief. Other people had the same experience, two famous examples are The Poetry Society that won the battle for their domain name out of court without a penny paid thanks to the publicity the story got (lots of polite e-mails to Ultimate Search asking to restore true ownership/purpose to voxnyc.com hopefully would do the same in this case) and PriceWaterHouseCoppers lost their claim to pwc.com to Ultimate search in court.

So the best strategy seems to be to contact the new owners directly as Netsol doesn't feel responsible as their statement to another ex domain owner shows: "...it now will be up to the new person with the domain to decide whether or not they feel like giving it up."

Contact information for the perps:

Ultimate Search
DNS Support (dns@ultsearch.com)
+852 2537 9677
GPO Box 7862
Central
Hong Kong

The email reply they gave in the past when contacted by legitimate domain owner:

Yes, he could email us asking for it back, and provide his contact information so we know how to transfer the domain. Also, we've received several emails from people accusing us of stealing the domain, while all we did was register a domain that appeared abandoned at the time. We'd appreciate it if he could put some kind of disclaimer on his site making it clear that we did not steal the domain and we gave the domain back free of charge.

Regards,
Ultimate Search, Inc.

So there might be a chance that vox gets his domain name back after all, in the meantime update your links and visit www.libertythink.com/vox.htm for updates about the situation.


Link to the new voxfux website:

www.voxfux.com

Mirrors of voxnyc.com:

Cryptome VOXNYC Mirror
Lightscion VOXNYC Mirror

Download voxnyc.com archive (5.83MB)




posted by wenz at 6:21:00 PM |