Sony Forgets To Pay For Domain, Hilarity Ensues

First time accepted submitter Dragoness Eclectic writes Early Tuesday, gamers woke up to find out that they couldn't log in to any Sony Online Entertainment games--no Everquest, no Planetside 2, none of them. Oddly, the forums where company reps might have posted some explanation weren't reachable, either. A bit of journalistic investigation by EQ2Wire came across the explanation: SOE forgot to renew the domain registration on SonyOnline.net, the hidden domain that holds all their nameservers. After 7 weeks of non-payment post-expiration, NetworkSolutions reclaimed the domain, sending all access to Sony's games into an internet black hole. Sony has since paid up. SOE's president, John Smedley, has admitted that the expiration notices were being sent to an "unread email" address.

Re:Black hole?

[theskipper]

There's no law per se, but there is a recent ICANN requirement called "Whois Accuracy Data Specification". It requires registrars to contact the registrant and click an emailed link as validation that their whois info is correct. The domain can be suspended if the validation isn't done within 15 days.

The intent is good but the implementation is pretty mindboggling. They're expecting every owner of a domain name to check that the email sent to them is not a phishing attempt...how that's supposed to work reliably is anyone's guess.

So, yeah, owners are supposed to verify to the registrars that the info is accurate which you could say is "ICANN's law". But not legally. Here's one of many articles that goes deeper into the issue:

http://blog.easydns.org/2014/0... [easydns.org]

Re:Black hole?

[LordKronos]

Actually, 10 years is the max registration. And that's exactly what I do. Throwaway domains that I'm experimenting with might only get a year or 2, but once anything becomes important to my business, it gets renewed for 10 years. The same is true for my personal domain. And every couple years I go through and bump it back up to the max. I'd literally have to go 10 years without remembering to renew a domain before one would expire. I can't see why any business would do otherwise.

Re:ring ring

[Anonymous Coward]

According to this article: [itworld.com]

On Twitter, however, SOE President John Smedley suggested that the company had failed to pay its website bills.

"The payment notifications went to a junk email box," Smedley tweeted, adding, "Someone left and it got caught in the replacements junk filter. Simple as that. Embarrassing as that. No point dodging."

"DNS problems could take up to 48 hours to resolve," he wrote, adding, "We are really really sorry on this one folks. Embarrassing and preventable. We screwed up."

Re: Black hole?

[pla]

here's the law. you want me to do any of your other homework for you?

Not the GP, but yeah, I do - Can you explain what an anti-domainsquatting law that specifically deals with trademarks and identity theft, and absolutely nothing to do with simply giving fake info to a registrar, has to do with your original claim that giving ACCURATE contact info counts as US law?

Now, ICANN can enforce its policies on the registrars themselves, simply by virtue of the fact that a registrar requires ICANN's continued blessing to operate. But the only recourse they have about (non-identity-stealing) fake registration info comes down to taking the domain away from you. For someone like Sony, that might look like an end-of-the-world scenario. For someone who just wants a named place to stick stuff online for my own personal use? Meh, worst case, I've lost $10-$15 and I have to wait three days for a new domain to propagate (and not always even out the money - Much to my surprise, I actually had GoDaddy refund me when I flatly refused to send them a photocopy of my license, three months into a registration).

Re:Black hole?

[ketomax]

I bought mine for 10 no problems.

Re:Black hole?

[ArcadeNut]

Network Solutions offers it:

http://www.networksolutions.co... [networksolutions.com]