Nominet wins UK domain scammers case in Australia

September 2004

An Aussie judge has branded the actions of two internet domain conmen as "nothing less than deceitful" after they sent out 50,000 fake invoices to domain name holders in the UK.

The dodgy invoices from UK Internet Registry were sent out last year after Chesley Rafferty, Bradley Norrish and their three companies had hoovered up the details of thousands of domain name holders following a data mining attack on the .uk WHOIS database.

The attack in February 2003 was so bad it forced Nominet - the .uk Internet domain name registry - to suspend its WHOIS database for nine hours to prevent the theft of further details.

After pursuing UK Internet Registry for 18 months, Nominet has won a milestone legal battle that centres on infringement of copyright, a breach of Australian fair trade laws and the issuing of misleading notices.

Just before the hearing at the Federal Court of Australia, four of the five respondents coughed to the scam. As a result, the trial went ahead against Norrish only. The judge found he had authorised copyright infringement, and was involved in misleading or deceptive conduct.