Warehousing domain names

Intriguing story today featuring our current favourite topic: internet domain names.

Thankfully for the online travel industry it doesn’t impact on companies that have bought dot-travel domains, but it is an interesting tale nonetheless.

Brussels-based company EURid, which handles sales of dot-EU domain names, is understood to have frozen 74,000 titles after discovering three UK companies had snapped up the entire lot.

The trio, EURid says, are acting as a front for a group of 400 registrars, who then sell on the domain names to other companies.

The problem is called “warehousing” in the internet world and is just one of a number of issues to come up with the creation of new top-level domains.

Another major problem is cyber squatting – when companies buy domain names of other organisations and attempt to sell on the rights at an inflated price.

Ironically EURid was hoping to eradicate this problem by selling dot-EU domain names in two stages earlier this year – but clearly didn’t expect to be hit by another issue.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution