Registrar GoDaddy warns that registries are undermining the new european domains

Hundreds of fake registrars are undermining the entire .eu landrush period by unfairly buying up domain names on behalf of a small number of firms, and then planning to sell them on at a huge profit.

This is the view of Bob Parsons, chief executive of leading .com registrar GoDaddy.com, who told IT Week that registry Eurid's requirements to become a .eu registrar were not rigorous enough, enabling certain parties to abuse the system.

"There are probably around 20 players or more involved here and well over 720 fake registrars – the accreditation [for .eu registrars] was about as loose as I have ever seen it."

Although Eurid provides a list of accredited registrars on its web site, Parsons also explained that the registry has allowed any registrar to opt out of this if they wish.

The landrush registration period was intended to provide a level playing field for accredited registrars to purchase the names requested by their customers, but if some companies have hundreds of "phantom registrars" all registering names on their behalf, they will be able to snap up most of the most popular names in the landrush, he explained. They will then likely auction off these names to the highest bidder.

Steve Witt of UK-based registrar UKDomains said that any firms wanting to undertake such a scam would have to have great financial backing and a clear idea of the market for the names they want to acquire.

"It's feasible and ethically wrong if it has happened, but someone would have to be pretty determined to want to do it," he said. "Registration [as a registrar] could be done relatively easily but Icann [accreditation] is easy too – the crux of the thing is that .eu has been so much more successful than anyone imagined; it has caught everyone off guard."