Almost a year ago, I transferred a domain I owned from an OpenSRS reseller to my eNom account.

Today, I received the following email message from OpenSRS on behalf of itself and its reseller:

Dear Gregg DesElms

Our records indicate that the following domain name has been transferred away from [redacted] and has been identified as belonging to you:

[redacted].com

With increasing frequency, outside companies are making unsolicited renewal offers via regular post, directed towards you, the registrant. It has been brought to our attention that these letters have been causing a great deal of confusion and may have resulted in you inadvertently transferring your domain names away from [redacted].

If you believe you inadvertently transferred your domain name, Tucows would like to help you. In an attempt to rectify this situation, we are currently in the process of confirming concerns from customers who inadvertently transferred their domain names.

If you would like your domain name transferred back to [redacted], your previous service provider, please go to the following URL to submit your request:

[redacted]

We will then attempt to transfer your domain back to [redacted], at no additional charge to you, the registrant.

We will keep you apprised of the status of our efforts.

As an ICANN accredited registrar, we believe that your wishes are paramount We will do whatever we can to keep you satisfied.


In my case, I meant to transfer the domain away from OpenSRS and to my eNom account. So there was no mistake.

But I realize that many people got tricked by the Verisign thing wherein it sent renewal notices to non-Verisign customers who then "renewed" with Verisign and, in the process, had their domains transferred away from wherever they were to Verisign. And I know that a Court of Law ordered Verisign to stop that deceptive practice... which I believe it has done. And I'm sure that many of the people who were tricked were OpenSRS customers. Clearly, OpenSRS would like to get that business back. And that's understandable.

But is it okay for OpenSRS to basically spam its former customers in order to do so? And since the message clearly came from OpenSRS and didn't involve the OpenSRS reseller, yet it seems to be making a pitch on behalf of said OpenSRS reseller, I wonder how the OpenSRS reseller mentioned in the message (whose name I have redacted, above, since the spam isn't his fault) feels about it and having his name associated with what basically amounts to a spam?

Or is it a spam?

Just asking.

Vey tough question.

Spam it is, but in this case I see the justification for it. So many newbes were scared back to NetSol and veriSin thru that method - so I would actually like for them to go back to OpenSRS.

I'm sure many would disagree - but getting people away from VeriSign is not a bad thing to do in my opinion but they can chose to stay there if they like.

Originally posted by DotComster
So many newbes were scared back to NetSol and veriSin thru that method
Actually, it wasn't that they were "scared back to NetSol." The Court didn't find that Verisign had used a scare tactic. It found that Verisign had been deceptive; that it had sent a "renewal" reminder to domain registrants that weren't even Verisign customers, banking on said registrants not even noticing that the renewal notice was not from the registrar where their domains were actually registered. The "renewal" included language that authorized the transfer of the domain to Verisign from wherever it was.

Many domain owners don't even know who their registrar is. Many registered through their hosting company or someone else. Or they just don't remember -- or don't care. When they got a "renewal" notice that looked official and actually contained their domain name, those who were too busy to notice that it was not coming from their registrar just assumed it was time to renew and signed the form and sent it back. That's how Verisign swiped domains from other registrars -- OpenSRS among them, of course. It was not "scare tactics" (which I'm not even sure is illegal, per se) but, rather, "deceptive business practices" (which is). It was downright predatory, in fact. And Verisign had to be told more than once to cut it out before it finally stopped.
Originally posted by DotComster
Very tough question.

Spam it is, but in this case I see the justification for it...

...so I would actually like for them to go back to OpenSRS. I'm sure many would disagree - but getting people away from VeriSign is not a bad thing to do in my opinion...
This is not meant as a flame or sarcastic retort or anthing like that. It's meant as an honest challenge to what you've written in the interest of good debate...

So do I understand you to be saying that as long as the purpose is sufficiently honorable it's okay to spam? The end justifies the means? Isn't spam always spam, and isn't spam always bad?

We are an openSRS reseller and this issue was informally announced to us by Tucows earlier today to let us know what they are doing.

In my opinion, I think they are doing a good job. Sending an email which is honest and straight to the point.

We have several customers who have been tricked into transferring their domains away from by not only Verisign, but other registrars including eNom, and they are greatful for this kind of notice and advice.

However, I understand what you must be thinking in respect of a person who legitimately transferred his domain away. But it definately isn't spam.

Originally posted by joelmoss
We are an openSRS reseller and this issue was informally announced to us by Tucows earlier today to let us know what they are doing.
But did they give you the choice of opting out so that those of us who might consider it spam would not think less of you, too?
Originally posted by joelmoss
We have several customers who have been tricked into transferring their domains away from by not only Verisign, but other registrars including eNom, and they are greatful for this kind of notice and advice.
Whoa! Easy, Joel. I understand the other points you're making and I respect them as your differing opinion. And that's cool. But just for the record: eNom never engaged in such deceptive business practices. Verisign and... lemme think... perhaps someone else reading here can remind us... there was at least one other registrar that pulled the Verisign stunt, as I recall... but it wasn't eNom! Just FYI.
Originally posted by joelmoss
However, I understand what you must be thinking in respect of a person who legitimately transferred his domain away. But it definately isn't spam.
Why not? I mean, I'm no longer a customer of OpenSRS -- by whatever means that happened. The message is unsolicited. It is commercial. And it is email. So why should it not be considered "Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE) or "spam?" And how does whether or not I meant to transfer the domain away (and, therefore, I am not a victim of the scam) influence that? I mean, I appreciate that you recognize that I might be seeing it differently because my transfer away from OpenSRS was, as you put it, "legitimate" and had nothing to do with the Verisign scam, but if you step back from it and assess it on its surface -- and not through the eyes of an OpenSRS reseller, such as you are -- why should that matter, really?

Again, I'm just askin'

Actually, this email was a mistake.

OpenSRS announced to it's resellers today that it would be sending an email out next week to recent transfers to eNom or Verisign. They also told us that they sent out a few emails by accident today while testing the program that will be sending emails next week.

Even though you consider this SPAM, it was a mistake, and yes - they should probably send out clarification.

As for eNom engaging in these business practices, they most certainly did - though indirectly. Domain Registry of "America","Canada", "Europe" are eNom resellers, and have been sued for this same deceptive marketing practice.

-t

Originally posted by thewitt
Actually, this email was a mistake.

OpenSRS announced to it's resellers today that it would be sending an email out next week to recent transfers to eNom or Verisign. They also told us that they sent out a few emails by accident today while testing the program that will be sending emails next week.

Even though you consider this SPAM, it was a mistake, and yes - they should probably send out clarification.
Okay... that's fair, I suppose. If it really was a mistake, and if OpenSRS owns-up to that, then I guess no harm no foul. But I must tell you that I find this "mistake" explanation to be highly suspicious. I'm having trouble imagining how that could happen.

Also, mistake or not, how does whether or not the transfer was "recent" really change things? I mean, really? Isn't it still spam, even if the transfer was recent and not like mine -- almost a year old? Once the transfer is complete, the owner of the transferred domain is no longer a customer of OpenSRS. No agreement to receive solicitations from OpenSRS or any of its resellers which he/she may have electronically signed at time of registration applies any more. No matter how old the transfer was, isn't OpenSRS's solicitation after the fact considered spam no matter what? And if it isn't -- if that opinion of mine is unreasonable -- then, in order for the solicitation to have any hope of the appearance of reasonableness, shouldn't the solicitation occur quite literally immediately after or even during the transfer?

Originally posted by thewitt
As for eNom engaging in these business practices, they most certainly did - though indirectly. Domain Registry of "America","Canada", "Europe" are eNom resellers, and have been sued for this same deceptive marketing practice.
Oh boy. I feel a heated discussion about the nature of "agency" versus the definition of a "reseller," under US, international and common law, coming on.

[sigh]

Under the law, eNom has no responsibility for the behavior of its resellers in matters such as this. Solicitations such as you describe -- if they even happened -- did not come from eNom, were not cleared through or run past eNom before being sent, are frowned upon by eNom, and are the sole responsibility of the resellers, and not eNom. As a matter of law, there is no direct or indirect responsibility on eNom's part for such deceptive marketing practices of their resellers.

eNom is very careful about defining its business relationship with its resellers. That's why eNom makes the reseller fund his account and pre-pay for the domains he sells. That step is necessary in order for there to be a clear and unambiguous indication that the reseller is a separate legal entity, purchasing products at a wholesale price and then, in effect, inventorying them on its shelves (in this case, the "shelves" being the reseller's eNom account), and then re-selling them at a profit at times and places of its choosing and at a price of its own determination which is higher than the price it paid and will, therefore, yield a gross profit. There is no agency agreement between eNom and its resellers and, because this sort of allegation as you are making (and the concomitant blurring of the line between reseller and agent) is nothing new, there is a massive body of statutory and case law which clearly defines where the line is between agency and reseller. And those resellers would have to have been agents of eNom's in order for eNom to have any responsibility whatsoever. So, contrary to what you wrote above, there is no "indirectlY" to it. None.

Now, all that having been said, there's clearly an ethical argument that you could make regarding this matter. Even though eNom had nothing to do with the bad behavior of its resellers who you're alleging engaged in deceptive business practices, one could argue that upon learning that they had, if eNom truly abhores such practices it could have demonstrated that by terminating their reseller privileges or sanctioning them in some other way. Now that argument I would have trouble rebutting.

It will be interesting following the legal outcome of all this deceptive marketing - and whether everything is resolved out of court or if the courts do get involved.

My understanding - though it may certainly be flawed - is that eNom has refused to take any action against DROA/C/E, and this bothers me. Tucows/OpenSRS terminated their reseller agreement (according to domainscams.com) when they refused to stop these decepting marketing tactics.

-t

In case you want to read the OpenSRS discussion list dialog on this from earlier today, you can find it at http://www.opensrs.org/archives/discuss-list/0208/0247.html

-t

Originally posted by thewitt
My understanding - though it may certainly be flawed - is that eNom has refused to take any action against DROA/C/E, and this bothers me. Tucows/OpenSRS terminated their reseller agreement (according to domainscams.com) when they refused to stop these decepting marketing tactics.
Yes. Well... see, you've kinda' got me on that one, as I mentioned in my previous posting. eNom, in my opinion, should take a stand on such matters.

But -- and I'm not trying to just blindly defend eNom, here -- but once when I approached them about terminating some other reseller because of clearly unconscionable behavior (which, incidentally, is well-documented in these forums, but which I just don't want to bring up again by name and risk getting that horrible old thread restarted), eNom made a very lucid and sound argument to me about the difficulties and complications of acting or taking a stand like that too quickly -- especially if no legal outcome is there to guide them. By terminating a reseller because of allegations that are not borne out by a court decision or something else similar upon which eNom can hang its legal hat, it risks being sued by the terminated reseller for taking an action without cause that effectively puts him out of business. And boy, oh, boy, do the courts ever frown on that! Talk about a lucrative lawsuit! The costs of losing a suit like that so far outweigh the consequences of bad feelings that people like you and I may have toward eNom when it doesn't promptly punish idiots who resell their product and who, the process, do particularly nasty things. It's terribly complicated.

So, vexing as it may be, I'm not as upset with eNom over that sort of thing as I would be if it just up and participated in or sanctioned spamming or deceptive business practices by its resellers -- which, mercifully, eNom does not do. (Whew!)

Reason for edit: Replaced "mercilessly" with "mercifully." Boy, I must have been tired. [grin]

BTW redacted really isn't the right word. retracted maybe?

My question out of this (as I have reciently transferred away several domains) is did this go out to all domains that were reciently transfered or just ones that were transfered to eNom?

Frank

My understanding (from the notes in the OpenSRS discussion archive thread noted above) is these are only going out to Verisign and eNom transfers. They also are not supposed to go out until Tuesday of next week.

I don't pretend to know what the selection criteria are in total however.

-t

k, I should have read the openSRS posting first. I'm a bit more upset that they are targeting certain registrars. I have never seen eNom advertise anywhere.

Frank

The reason they are going out to eNom is that eNom is the ICANN registrar that Domain Registry of America/Canada/Europe/etc is using. See the following page for their deceptive mailing.

http://www.domainscams.com

-t

Originally posted by RandyL712
BTW redacted really isn't the right word. retracted maybe?
Good eye, Randy! But "redacted" is correct in this context.

In literature, "redaction" is, simply, the act of putting a literary work into publishable form or, more generally, putting something into writing. And the first definition of "redact" is to forumulate in a particular style or language.

So, based on that, "redacted" might not seem at first to be the right word. That's what I meant by "good eye."

But "redacted" is commonly used in the law in the way I used it. And when it is used in that context, it relies upon the second definition of "redact," which is, simply, to edit or, more precisely, to specifically make editorial changes in a text.

To grasp more fully what "redact" truly means, and its connotation, one can get a lot from looking at its synonyms:

cast
couch
edit
frame
put

or its similar or substitutable "type" words and terms:

alter
to alter
articulate
change
formulate
phrase
word
black out
to black out
to blank out
blue-pencil
bracket
to bracket out
copyedit
cut up
delete
falsify
hack
interpolate
subedit

Take all of that into consideration and you can see that, in this context, "redact" is the right word -- if not solely by the definitions and recognized synonyms and types, then at least by those coupled with its common usage in law and other similar places. "Redact," in this case, doesn't so much mean "deleted," as you are thinking it means. But, rather, "changed" or "edited."

Hope that helps! Still, Randy... good eye!

Originally posted by thewitt
The reason they are going out to eNom is that eNom is the ICANN registrar that Domain Registry of America/Canada/Europe/etc is using. See the following page for their deceptive mailing.

http://www.domainscams.com
Yes, that was my interpretation as well: That OpenSRS-to-Verisign transfers are being targeted because Verisign itself obtained transfers by deception; and that OpenSRS-to-eNom transfers are being targeted not because eNom obtained transfers by deception but, rather, because some of eNom's resellers did.

I hope that's clear to everyone.

But even after we get all that settled, the original question asked is still on the table: Is this spam?

And subsequent questions raised in this thread are equally valid and still unanswered: If it is spam -- if even OpenSRS would agree that it is (and I'm not saying that it has) -- is it justified in this case? Can spam ever be justified? Could or should OpenSRS have considered its only opportunity to protest the transfers to have been back when they happened; and, that opportunity having been lost, should OpenSRS have foregone the temptation to use the registrant data it still had in its database regarding domains no longer registered with it to solicit that business back from the registrars who now have it by allegedly deceptive means?

And, as I raised in another thread where this was mentioned, what about how OpenSRS's solicitation of its resellers' customers effectively destroys any attempts said resellers might have been making to mask from said customers the fact that they were reselling for OpenSRS? Of course I realize that such masking is only possible with customers that aren't particularly observant. But it is nevertheless true that many of the resellers of ICANN-approved registrars do not want the fact that they're reselling to be in any way obvious. And many ICANN-approved registrars go to great lengths to help their resellers maintain that precious illusion.

In the aforementioned thread on OpenSRS's web site (http://www.opensrs.org/archives/discuss-list/0208/0247.html), Tucows' Ross Wm Rader alluded to the issue (and, thereby, basically acknowledged its stickiness) with these words:

"Also note that these messages are being sent out on your respective behalfs - we have tried to remain as transparent as possible whilst living up to our obligations under our contract with the registries and ICANN."

But those words don't really mitigate the problem, do they? I mean, if I were an OpenSRS reseller, I think I'd be mad as hell right about now. At the very least, OpenSRS resellers should have been allowed to opt-out their customer lists if they wanted to, don't you think?

Just my opinion.