DISCODAMAGED ROBBED

Discodamaged Berlin has been robbed of it’s www_discodamaged_de domain name. We’ve moved to www.discodamaged.net. You might have noticed that the URL in the address bar is much prettier now and we're easier to find, so that’s a benefit. We made the move March 27th - it’s been a busy week - we hope you can still find us. If you have found us, please tell your friends ...

The bad guys  are variously described as Benson and Partner Ltd from Munich, Mark Benson in Texas, Domini Pro Ltd in Ancona Italy and Mr Yang Dao in Berlin. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that (see below.) Who knows? We’ll be complaining to Google to ban the lot of them and to http://www.denic.de/ who seem to control domain names in Germany. If you’ve got any advice on what redress we can take, give us a shout. Sympathy is also welcome.

Our email addresses are discodamaged.de@gmail.com (as before), discodamaged.net@gmail.com and editor@discodamaged.net. editor@discodamaged.de and george@discodamaged.de no longer work. Also, if you have a link to discodamaged.de from your site, please change it to www.discodamaged.net as soon as possible. Read on for the full gory details, how to locate the bad guys and how crime does not pay.

The sorry tale

I was trying to move discodamaged.de from one registrar (instra.com aka europeregistry.com) to another (godaddy.com) . Because of awkward .de domain name rules godaddy couldn’t do a simple domain transfer, so I had to wait for discodamaged.de to expire on instra.com. I was checking every 24 hours and I never imagined that any thieving wanker would try to get discodamaged.de – it isn’t that famous is it? But they did. They managed to sneak in through a 24 hour window and steal it from under my nose. Probably what they did is completely legal but it is NOT NICE.

These guys have now put up a pathetic website at discodamaged.de. Don’t go to it, it will only make them feel better. Here’s a screenshot of the generic crap that they put there and they are benefiting from all the work I’ve done over the last year or so.

The 'Clubs in Berlin' link takes you to a list of club lists and singles dating web site. It's all crap. They also have some nasty irritating pop ups that promise you millions of dollars.

According to http://www.denic.de/de/whois/index.jsp the new owners are in Munich and Texas. They started in Berlin and Italy but swiftly moved on. The terms of us for DENIC are these:
Die in der whois-Abfrage ersichtlichen Domaindaten sind rechtlich [legally] geschützt [proprietary , protected]. Sie dürfen nur zum Zwecke der technischen oder administrativen Notwendigkeiten [requirements]des Internetbetriebs oder zur Kontaktaufnahme mit dem Domaininhaber bei rechtlichen Problemen genutzt und ohne ausdrückliche schriftliche Erlaubnis der DENIC eG weder elektronisch noch in anderer Art gespeichert werden. Insbesondere die Nutzung zu Werbe- oder ähnlichen Zwecken ist ausdrücklich untersagt [expressly prohibited].

Durch das Betätigen des untenstehenden Buttons "Akzeptieren" versichern Sie, dass Ihrerseits ein berechtigtes Interesse vorliegt und Sie die ausgegebenen Daten nur zu diesen Zwecken [these purposes] nutzen werden. Ihnen ist bekannt, dass sich die DENIC.

I think that means I can't reproduce their data, but you can always look yourself by going to http://www.denic.de/de/whois/index.jsp and enter 'discodamaged'. And it looks like discodamaged aren't the only sufferers. If you google Benson and Partner Ltd you'll find otehr problems with them, e.g. at
http://www.ayom.com/topic-23282.html and
http://consultdomain.de/forum/domaincafe/29555-wer-ist-das.html

Some good news: Google page rank is a measure of how important Google thinks a site is. discodamaged.de was 3/10 in March and remained ther briefly after it was purloined. It is now (7/4/09) down to 2/10 and falling. www.discodamaged.net was 0/10 on March 27th and it's already at 2/10 today and climbing. CRIME DOESN'T PAY!

Comments

[Berni]

These guys work hand in hand with the dialer mafia. It is a fact that they also link to "free" download sites with prepared software. This way they have a distributed computer network that starts forbidden automatic whois requests. They don't cause attention because one single computer and IP is involved seldomly. But the whole network easily find out about expired or released domains that they can grab.

[Chuck]

if you happen to get any further info on these idiots I would be more than grateful to hear from you.

we recently ran into the same problem with these guys.

thanks,
Chuck