Here is a screenshot from the Drop.com.au “Public Domain Auctions” on Monday 17 August:
You will see above there are some domains “valued” by Drop’s own “magical valuer” at $5000, $2000 and they sold for $1000 and $25 on the Drop.com.au private monopoly auction.
Meanwhile, below there is a screenshot from the Drop.com.au “Public Domain Auction” from yesterday, Thursday 20 August:
That’s right.
You saw that right.
Drop.com.au no longer reveal the closing sale price on the daily domain auction platform.
Drop.com.au have become even less transparent.
The one and only monopoly Australian premium domain name auction, doesn’t even show you who won or how much money was paid to secure a dropping domain name anymore.
Is this technically even still an auction at this point?
For some reason Drop.com.au don’t want you to know who’s bidding on certain domain names, if they leave them off the auction platform altogether, or how much they sell for.
Meanwhile… Look over there!
Coincidentally, today I was informed that David Warmuz (Above, Trillion, Drop) has written an article about me over at my old domainer-blog that Ned O’Meara and myself made very popular over many years, before he ran it into the ground, as he did with DNTrade, Netfleet…
In his new article, he is blaming ME for causing auDA to hide the Public WHOIS Record data for expired domain names as we wrote about two days ago.
The nerve of writing an article about how little-old-me could be that powerful and important to cause such a change of the auDA WHOIS public records after 26 years! All by myself?!
If only!
If I could move mountains like that at auDA, the first thing I would do is tell them to either create competition (and fast!) for the daily expired domain auctions, or stop Drop.com.au from doing it altogether and take it on for themselves. At least it would be fair and transparent!
Although I found David Warmuz’s writing style very confusing (I got lost quite a few times?), I have nothing to do with “DomainRescue.com.au” or “AusReg.com.au” so he might want to get his facts right.
According to ASIC Records, Domain Rescue Pty Ltd has been operating since 2006, well before I even bought my first domain name!
The owner of DomainRescue.com.au and Domain Rescue Pty Ltd since 2006 is Michael Gusenzow.
And according to ASIC Records, the owner of AusReg.com.au and Aus Reg Pty Ltd is Paul Green.
I have nothing to do with these “Domain Rescue” companies or people he speaks of!
I also can’t speak on behalf of any “overseas” company (as Warmuz calls them), but I can state again that there is no way my DropCatcher.com.au service can beat the monopoly Drop.com.au multiple Identity Digital registry connections, because my service is not an auDA Registrar. We’ve explained this over here before. There’s no way anyone can hand-register a domain name and beat Drop either. It’s not possible on any level.
It’s interesting that in his article, David Warmuz uses language like “can’t understand” and “suspects” and “illegal” and “legal”… Is David Warmuz also a confused lawyer now?
What’s even more interesting is when he states (as a lawyer would), “Legally as soon as the domain hits Pending Purge / Pending Delete status the domain license has been revoked with no chance to recover the domain, so contractually the Registrant is no longer the owner of the domain. So legally it makes sense to strip out the Registrant data.”
To know this kind of information, seemingly from auDA directly, and give his “legal” opinion on it, does this mean David Warmuz speaks to someone high up in auDA about this kind of high-end auDA Regulation stuff regularly?
Instead, isn’t it more likely that perhaps David Warmuz is the one that has the influence and power to get auDA to turn off the public auDA WHOIS record data for expired domain names? As opposed to little-old-ME?
Doesn’t all of this just help Drop.com.au even more by not allowing other “expired domain name reminder service providers” to offer services to try and catch expired domain names?
And auDA think this is a good idea?
To make even more roads only lead to Drop?
I must admit I do like this sentence from David Warmuz on his latest blog, “We believe one of the other potential reasons“… as he attempts to make a case to blame ME solely for auDA turning off expired WHOIS record data. So, in that regard, I’ll now try and use his “reasoning” fancy sentence for myself…
Here goes…
I believe the potential reasons David Warmuz is blaming ME for auDA turning off Expired Domain Name WHOIS record data is an attempt to divert the attention away from his monopoly auction, and his association with SEO WEB RECOVERY, and what just happened with the UBER.com.au domain name and the fact that he now HIDES bidding prices on his auctions so everything is even more hidden, less transparent, than ever before at Drop.com.au(.)
Look at the mess auDA (not to mention the auDA BOARD) are causing by sitting around and doing nothing about this craziness since 2020.
The Australian domain name system has lost all of it’s trust and transparency.
As we said in our recent article, auDA‘s mantra of, “first come, first served” has become “first-connected to Drop’s back door“.
