"Pair misled UK companies over domain names
Australian Financial Review (Information) Sep 23
Rachael Osman-Chin 
The man behind the scheme that misled 10,000 Australian businesses into buying domain names they didn't need was
yesterday found to have engaged in misleading conduct with a similar scheme in the United Kingdom.

Chesley Rafferty, the 25-year-old Perth man behind Domain Names Australia, and his associate Bradley Norrish were found
to have tried to mislead 50,000 UK businesses.

The ruling in the Federal Court in Perth comes a week after a decision that cleared the way for Australian businesses to
seek damages from Domain Names Australia, following court action by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
and the non-profit internet authority .au Domain Administration (auDA).

The court found yesterday that an employee of Diverse Internet, of which Mr Norrish was a director and half-owner,
developed a computer program to gather more than 2million domain names in the UK from Nominet UK, the official central
registry for UK-based internet domain names, in January 2003.

This information was used by Internet Registry, another company controlled by Rafferty, to send 50,000 notices to UK
businesses implying they were in danger of losing their current .co.uk domain name unless they sent a registration fee
to Mr Norrish's company.

Mr Norrish told the court it was Mr Rafferty who told the employee to get the mailing information from Nominet UK, and
that he was merely passing that information on.

Nominet UK was the complainant in the Federal Court action. 
"It lies beyond the limits of credulity to suppose that Mr Norrish, in telling Mr Gusenzow [the employee] to act
according to MrRafferty's instructions, had no idea of what Mr Gusenzow was going to do," Justice Robert French said.
"He was not operating at arm's length from Mr Rafferty."

Justice French found the two men used the heading "UK Internet Registry" above a London address to mislead the
recipients into thinking the company sending the notice was authorised by Nominet UK.

He also found the fact that the pair were in fact selling registrations of .com domains rather than re-registrations of
existing .co.uk domain names was misleading and not just a clever marketing ploy.

On three occasions last year, thousands of Australian businesses received official-looking letters stating the need for
the recipient to protect their domain names by registering one or a small number of domain names.

At the bottom of the letter there was a payment slip asking for the recipient to enclose a cheque for $237 and a return
address.

As with the UK letters, if recipients took the time to study the letter they might have realised the domain name or
names that DNA was proposing to register were slightly different from the one their company was actually using, for
example ending in .com rather than .com.au.

DNA is the third incarnation of Mr Rafferty's scheme in two years. 
A hearing as to damages as a result of the latest case will be held at a later date."

Cheers,

 

Chris Disspain

CEO - auDA

ceo§auda.org.au

www.auda.org.au