EURid froze 74000 European (.eu) domain names

Thousands of website names ending in the .eu suffix have been suspended by the body that administers the domain.
EURid froze 74,000 domain names which it believes have been registered by a group of registrars who intend to sell them on.

The process, known as "warehousing", is not permitted by EURid which is suing 400 registrars for breach of contract.

EURid believes the domains were acquired by three UK companies which acted as a front for the group.

EURid named the companies as Ovidio Ltd, Fausto Ltd and Gabino Ltd.
Statement from EURid:
"In this case we are convinced that the domain name holders of the 74 000 .eu names are acting as a front for a number of registrars. The domain name holders and the registrars can be regarded as one and the same," said Herman Sobrie, legal manager of EURid.

"Since registrars should only register domain names for existing customers and not 'warehouse' the names in order to resell them at a higher price, this is clearly in breach of the registrar contract."

The "warehousing" scheme was uncovered by EURid's monitoring system that seeks to ensure that all holders of .eu domain names are based in the EU zone, as required by .eu rules.

EURid also said that the action does not affect any of the nearly two million legitimate .eu domain name holders.

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