They helped
This is a post from 04/19/07 by Bjorn Kassoe Andersen, founder, owner and leader of Direction, a management and communications consulting company based in Denmark, which had its domain, direction.com, stolen back in 2006.
Here are some helpful people that assisted and educated us about the misgivings and shortcomings of the international domain name registry system:
DK-CERT. These guys work with computer and Internet security all day long. They helped us understand what was going on and they also helped perform a thorough security check of our company’s computers. Thanks! They are part of the international CERT network.
WIPO is one of the arbitrators with the power to return a domain to its rightful owner. They can only do so under ICANN’s policies for domain name disputes, which require that the complaining party be able to substantiate the claim with a trade mark registration or other relevant documentation. ICANN has appointed in total three arbitrators.
NITEC, a special unit of the Danish National Police responsible for dealing with computer-related crime. While the local police officer did not understand much when we first tried to report our company’s domain stolen, the guy at NITEC certainly understood what it was all about.
Bender von Haller Dragsted is one the relatively few Danish law firms with specialist knowledge about the legal aspects of the IT-industry and the Internet. They kindly pointed us to relevant sources during our initial research in this case.
DK-Hostmaster. While not in any way directly involved in this case, Per Kølle, the CEO of DK-Hostmaster kindly shared his knowledge about the pitfalls and misgivings of the international domain name system. ”Companies with valuable domain names would behave quite differently if they knew how fragile the systems used by international domain name registrars are,” he summarized. Under the Danish .dk domain, rules for change of ownership are stricter than they are for domains under ICANN policies. Changes of legal ownership require either a written signature or the use of both user id and a PIN-code. A further difference is that while international registrars are able to transfer or dismiss domain names, this is not the case in Denmark.
