By John Leyden for The
Register.
This article has been reproduced with permission.
Bradley Norrish, along with business partner Chesley Rafferty,
ran an outfit called UK Internet Registry, and three other firms,
which sent 50,000 fake invoices to domain name holders in the UK
during 2003. The information needed to mount the scam was obtained
from a data mining attack on the .uk WHOIS database.
The scale of the attack was so severe that Nominet, the .uk
internet domain name registry, was forced to suspend its WHOIS
database, which allows people to check the registrants of domain
names for nine hours to prevent further abuse.
Nominet linked the attack back to UK Internet Registry and sued
the firm and its directors for breach of copyright and offences
against Australian fair trade laws.
An Australian court upheld
Nominet's complaint, paving the way for it to sue for costs and
damages. In January 2006, Nominet was awarded A$1.3m ($970K) in
damages against Chesley Rafferty and Bradley Norrish for copyright
infringement, as well as an additional A$500K ($373K) stipend to
reflect the "flagrancy" of the breaches.
In a letter,
published by Domainwatch, Norrish said although he'd been forced to
declare himself broke because of legal judgments against him, he
might yet return to the domain name business.
"I'm sure most of you on the domain list will be pleased to hear
I am now declared officially bankrupt. This will undoubtedly bring
varying levels of happiness to those involved in selling domains
from those who raise a slight smile, to those who leap
enthusiastically out of their chairs," Norrish writes.
"It was officially at 4.50pm yesterday afternoon that the Pink
Bankruptcy Card was raised to send me off the field for three
years. So a big congratulations to the captain of the opposite team
Nominet as well as all their supporters. If the game's still worth
playing in three years time I might just get a recall, and if I do
you know it will be with fresh legs."
Nominet said the rocky financial straits Norrish finds himself
in are a just a consequence of his abuse of the WHOIS registry.
Nominet chief executive Lesley Cowley commented: "The bankruptcy
brings an appropriate and successful end to the litigation against
the directors of UK Internet Registry and proves that data mining
the WHOIS is a serious industry issue that Nominet will not
tolerate.
"It has been a long, expensive and often challenging process,
but we take protection of our intellectual property and copyright
ownership very seriously. This case proves that we can and will
detect, track down and sue for WHOIS infringement to protect our
business and our .uk registrants from domain name scams," she
added.
© The Register
2006
