domainwatch.org

Regarding Chesley Rafferty’s claim in the newspaper article below that I am “obsessive compulsive” about his operations, I have the following statement to make:

It is the type of behaviour that is of interest not the personalities. I have been consistent with my approach to this kind of behaviour long before Chesley Rafferty and Bradley Norrish arrived on the scene (see the domainwatch.org and dotau.org archives). It is also my belief that past behaviour is usually the best predictor of future behaviour.

As long as domain registrants believe they are being misled and deceived then I will continue to watch those companies and people responsible.

Here are three examples:

Example 1:

November 26, 2001
Aust domain name resellers brace for bloodbath
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/business/soa/Aust_domain_name_resellers_brace_for_bloodbath/0,39023166,20262049,00.htm

Mark Spektor (Internet Name Group) asserted ” … Rowe has been conducting a smear campaign against us for sometime and has refused to desist … ”

July 11, 2006
Domain name entrepreneur declared bankrupt
http://www.theage.com.au/news/biztech/domain-name-entrepreneur-declared-bankrupt/2006/07/10/1152383674987.html?page=fullpage

” … Mr Rafferty accuses Mr Rowe of being “obsessive compulsive” about his operations … ”

Example 2:

Blair Rafferty’s DomainName.com.au Pty Ltd, which ” … (Chesley) Rafferty says he has nothing to with the operation of … “, is the latest addition to the watch list.

Example 3:

Here are some of the companies and people reported on domainwatch.org - does Chesley Rafferty’s quote in today’s Age infer that they all relate to him?

Blair Rafferty
Bradley Norrish
Chesley Rafferty
ComAURegister
Craig Oehlers
Diverse Internet
Domain Name Authority of Australia
Domain Names Australia
Domain Names NZ
Domain Services
DomainName.com.au
Domains Australia
Ezinames
Federal Bureau of Domain Names
IMCO Corporation
Internet Name Group
Internet Registrations Australia
Internet Registrations Worldwide
Internet Registry
iRegistrations
NetRegister
Paul Fox
Peter Jacobs
ProWeb Solutions
Registry Group
UK Internet Registry

Domain name entrepreneur declared bankrupt
http://www.theage.com.au/news/biztech/domain-name-entrepreneur-declared-bankrupt/2006/07/10/1152383674987.html?page=fullpage

” …

Domain name entrepreneur declared bankrupt
Nick Miller
July 11, 2006
Next

CONTROVERSIAL internet domain name entrepreneur Brad Norrish has been declared bankrupt, but the brother of his former business partner is still selling domain names.

Domainwatch.org, a self-appointed watchdog of Mr Norrish’s operations has warned businesses to keep a keen eye out for domain name marketing spam that closly resembles an invoice.

Mr Norrish, 27, from Western Australia, was declared bankrupt last Monday, which he says will “bring varying levels of happiness to those involved in selling domains”.

Mr Norrish signed off an email to an industry listgroup with the promise, “if the game’s still worth playing in 3 years time I might just get a recall . . . with fresh legs”.

“The game” is the lucrative business of marketing domain name registrations. But Mr Norrish and his business partner, Chesley Rafferty, have been warned by the umpire that they play outside the rules.

Last year the Federal Court awarded $1.3 million damages for breach of copyright against Mr Norrish and Mr Rafferty. The court found they had used data mining search techniques to copy a British domain name registrar’s database of customers.

They then sent 50,000 “invoices” to those customers telling them their domain was up for renewal, a practice known as “domain slamming”.

Lesley Cowley, CEO of Nominet, says: “The bankruptcy brings an appropriate and successful end to the litigation against (Norrish and Rafferty).”

Mr Norrish says the bankruptcy “takes a lot of pressure off my shoulders”.

“It’s the end to a long and pitiful legal dispute,” he says.

He says he is still friends, but not a business partner, with Mr Rafferty.

In 2004, the Federal Court found Mr Rafferty and his company, Domain Names Australia (DNA), guilty of false and misleading conduct under the Trade Practices Act for a similar operation: mailing hundreds of thousands of notices that looked like invoices for renewal of a domain name.

If filled in and returned, the notices registered a new domain name through Mr Rafferty’s company.

The court instructed Mr Rafferty to let his customers know of the deception.

When contacted by Next, Mr Rafferty said there had been “a lot of hype” about his marketing style. DNA continued to operate after the Federal Court action, changing the notices to comply with the court’s ruling, he says.

DNA has since been wound up. Mr Rafferty says that since his bankruptcy late last year he has not been doing “anything” - apart from some consulting work - in the area of domain name marketing.

However, ASIC records reveal that Mr Rafferty’s younger brother, Blair, took over Chesley Rafferty’s roles as director of the companies Domains Australia, Domainname.com.au and Firebird Corporation.

Domainname.com.au, based in Melbourne but registered in WA, offers domain registration and website hosting.

According to the Domainwatch.org website, customers are complaining about marketing material that Domainname.com.au sends out offering domain name registration. One customer says the material gives the false impression of being invoices renewing an existing domain.

Domainwatch.org writer Josh Rowe says domain name registration is a difficult industry to police.

“Beware ‘invoices’ coming from companies you are not aware of, and always go back to check who you have registered a domain with,” Mr Rowe says.

However, Mr Rafferty accuses Mr Rowe of being “obsessive compulsive” about his operations.

“There’s a lot of people in the industry that got in trouble that he doesn’t seem to write about,” he says. “Where’s letters about (accused domain slammer) Domain Registry of America? They still mail into Australia . . . they would have made 10 times or more money than myself or Brad (Norrish).”

Mr Rafferty says he has nothing to to with the operation of his brother’s company, Domainname.com.au. Blair Rafferty could not be contacted by Next.

Mr Norrish says he is no longer marketing domain names.

“Domain names rate alongside roo shooting in terms of market size,” he says. “I would like to be in a market that there is more room to move in.”

Earlier this year he was accused of “cybersquatting” alternative versions of well-known corporations’ sites.

He attracted the ire of US sports TV channel ESPN by registering the domain name espn.com.au and was ordered to surrender ownership of the domain webjet.com.

However, Mr Norrish says the ESPN site was registered by an employee without his knowledge.

He says “in the past” he owned thousands of domain names because “the market was very cheap”, but the company that owned the names is in administration.

“I think domain name registration should be handled by a government department, along with business name registration and company registration,” he says.

“The ’self-regulated’ system at the moment really means that (domain register) auDA is controlled by popular vote of the majority of domain providers”.

… “

from: http://www.domainesinfo.fr/article.php?art_id=813 (French)

Translated into English by Google: http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.domainesinfo.fr%2Farticle.php%3Fart_id%3D813&langpair=fr%7Cen&hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&prev=%2Flanguage_tools

” …

Amend € 1,4 million for two defrauders
4 Jan 2006

An Australian court has just sent a very clear signal to the swindlers: to give false opinion of expiry or recording of domain names is a serious, detrimental act and severely punished.

To have usurped the law from the copyright, two defrauders have just bailed out of a fine of 2,3 million Australian dollars, that is to say a little more than 1,4 million euros.

An exemplary judgment for a couple of swindler emblematic. Because Brad Norrish and Chesley Rafferty made much speak about them since two years and half. The two “contractors” had succeeded in plundering the base of data WHOIS of the English register Nominet, thus obtaining the co-ordinates of owners of domain names.

They had used this information to make false opinion and to send them within the framework of mailings of mass to the owners of names. The opinions, seemingly very official, tried to convince the “victim” to pay at the full price is the renewal of a name which it did not even have, that is to say the recording of a name “potentially interesting” for this victim and currently available.

Serious consequences

Approximately 50 000 owners of names would have been concerned with this operation, launched while using companies like Domain Names Australia (DNA) based in Melbourne in Australia.

The consequences of this business had been very serious since Nominet, which carried felt sorry for against the two men in 2003, was obliged temporarily to close its base WHOIS to protect it.

In addition, in Australia, several governmental organizations gathered to prevent this kind of swindle. An interesting initiative at the time when, in France, one has noted for a few months a recrudescence of attempts at frauds. Thus several known companies would have been contacted by so-called registry offices indicating to them that they had just received a request for recording on names attacking the laws the company. The latter then saw herself encouraging to record the names “in a preventive way” by the company in question.

Source:
The Australian

… “

Domain slammer Rafferty bust
http://www.computerworld.co.nz/cw.nsf/UNID/D8CC28D9395E03B0CC2570C4000E7B55

” …

The pigeons have come home to roost of Chesley Rafferty, of Domain Names Australia/America infamy. Rafferty sent out countless letters which looked like invoices to domain name holders, telling them that their registration was about to expire and asked for hundreds of dollars to renew them.

By Juha Saarinen, Auckland | Friday, 25 November, 2005

…

Domain slammer Rafferty bust

The pigeons have come home to roost of Chesley Rafferty, of Domain Names Australia/America infamy. Rafferty sent out countless letters which looked like invoices to domain name holders, telling them that their registration was about to expire and asked for hundreds of dollars to renew them.

Nobody knows exactly how much money Rafferty made from the scam, but some reckon it’s millions. The Commerce Commission alone stopped over $500,000 worth of credit card transactions going into a Swiss bank account in Rafferty and fellow slammer Bradley Norrish’s names. The pair also raided the Nominet whois database for .uk, and hit British domain name holders with a mass mailout from Internet Registry UK, asking them for £175 fees.

Whereas our Commerce Commission didn’t take legal action against Rafferty, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission did, and also the Australian Domain Administration, which manages the .au namespace. They went after Rafferty in 2002 and last year, the Australian Federal Court found Rafferty guilty of breaching the Trade Practices Act, and ordered him to pay costs to the ACCC and auDA.

Both the ACCC and auDA petioned for Paul Chesley Rafferty, 26, to be made bankrupt, but it seems he beat them to it and fell on his own sword instead. Norrish meanwhile seems to be busy still through his Internet Registrations Worldwide company that has registered around 2,000 .us domains. He is also involved in a premium-rate SMS scheme whereby people are lured into entering a competition to win a plasma TV if they sign up for a horoscope service at A$2.50 per message.

Incidentally, Rafferty is not a friend of the FryUp. It appears he took umbrage to us describing him as a “scammer”. He was “embarrassed” for the FryUp that we didn’t bother to find out any factual detail and he threatened to sue unless we printed a retraction, as those without leg to stand on sometimes do. Check out the FryUp below for our response. Ah, good times. Good times.
… “

Web names boss on bankruptcy list (requires subscription)
http://www.theage.com.au/news/fulldisclosure/web-names-boss-on-bankruptcy-list/2005/10/23/1130006002477.html

” …

Web names boss on bankruptcy list
By Helen Westerman and Rebecca Urban
FULL DISCLOSURE
October 24, 2005

A SHONKY businessman who misled tens of thousands of businesses into buying domain names that they did not need has been declared bankrupt.

Chesley Rafferty, a former director of the rather official sounding Domain Names Australia, filed for bankruptcy this month, after two creditors petitioned for his bankruptcy.

The Federal Court last year found that Rafferty, 26, was guilty of misleading and deceptive conduct under the Trades Practices Act.

The company would send letters to businesses that were dressed up to look like invoices, asking them to register their domain name for $237 by a due date. And because the fee was a relatively small sum for many organisations, it was often processed with little scrutiny.

It is believed that he reaped millions.

Rafferty later appealed against the court’s decision but lost, and has been issued with an injunction forbidding him from committing further breaches.

He was also ordered to pay costs, which has obviously proved a problem given the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the self-regulating domain industry body, both of which took court action, have served bankruptcy notices on Rafferty to recoup their costs.

… “

Chesley Rafferty has declared himself bankrupt in a statement to the .au DNS List.

Chesley Rafferty and Domain Names Australia Pty Ltd were found guilty of misleading and deceptive conduct by an Australian Federal Court.

from: http://dotau.org/archive/2005-10/0085.html

” …

From: Chesley Rafferty <chesleyau @yahoo.com.au>
Date: Thu Oct 20 2005 - 15:20:03 UTC

It’s hard to find a good excuse to drink on a random
Friday but I’ve managed to find one.

As of 14/10/05 I am bankrupt - so crack the Dom
Perignon and drink away - of course I won’t be able to
join you unless you’re buying!

I look forward to seeing you guys back on the scene in
October 2008.

Love

Ches

PS If anyone has need for a sales/marketing manager in
between - just drop me a line.

… “