Three US law firms have filed a law suit in a Los Angeles court
against NeuLevel, the company controlling the new .biz domain name
registry. According to news agency Reuters, the lawsuit alleges
that NeuLevel's system for allocating domain names amounts to an
illegal lottery because the company is accepting payment from
prospective domain name holders without granting them rights to
specific domains.
NeuLevel was chosen by the internet's technical co-ordination
body, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN), to deal with the registration of the new .biz domains. The
allocation process adopted by NeuLevel is based on parties paying a
small fee to reserve a particular domain name during a specified
period ending in September. However, applicants are not given any
domain name rights until the end that period and if more than one
request has been made for the same domain, then the rights to that
domain will be determined by a lottery.
The suit argues that this process encourages applicants to make
several applications and payments for each domain name in an
attempt to increase their chances of success in the event of the
domain names rights being determined randomly - thereby amounting
to a lottery.
