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Nominet wins damages in data mining case

By Derek Sooman

On January 5, 2006, 12:42 PM

The national registry for all .uk domain names Nominet UK has been awarded damages in response to a data mining scam that led to thousands of Nominet registrants receiving misleading domain name notices. The amount paid out was AUD $1.3 million (£550,000). Back in the start of 2003, Nominet discovered that its WHOIS database had been subjected to unauthorised data mining. The database, which lists domain names and their owners, was compromised such that details of registrants were purged from it and 50,000 registrants received misleading notices from an outfit calling itself "UK Internet Registry". These notices looked like invoices and tried to sell .com names to the holders of .uk names. Nominet warned its registrants to disregard the notices and began an investigation.

Rafferty and Norrish, together with their three companies, were found liable in September 2004 for copyright infringement and breaches of Australian fair trade laws by copying data from Nominet's WHOIS service, and issuing misleading domain name registration notices.

Nominet has now been awarded damages for copyright infringement of AUS$810,953, with additional damages of AUS$500,000 to reflect the "flagrancy" of the breaches. This latter award is one of the highest additional damages awards ever made by the Australian Courts, according to Nominet.

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  1. January 5, 2006 1:49 PM
    PanicX said:
    If it wasn't for my eternal hatred of spammers, I'd say that this was an overly harsh ruling. AUS$1.3 million in fines for pulling data available from their WHOIS database just doesn't seem fair to me. But seeing as they used that data to spam, I hope they get punched in the face too.
    Reply
  2. January 5, 2006 5:21 PM
    nathanskywalker said:
    WEll,the people got there money...
    Reply
  3. January 6, 2006 11:39 AM
    MonkeyMan said:
    It looks like justice has been served, but wow thats a pretty hardcore fine considering the circumstances.
    Reply
  4. January 6, 2006 3:34 PM
    mentaljedi said:
    This is a big win for the hacker/spammer haters. "Justice had been served" says Monkeyman i have to agree. In reality, i'm pretty sure that... well i think this... what i'm trying to say is that i'm intrested to know how this will affect potential spammers out there and the ones doing this things still now.
    Reply

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