Bolton wins, auDA loses, Bottle Domains lives on (for the moment)
The injunction stands. Nick Boltons Internet domain name business - Bottle Domains - can continue registering Au domain names.
That’s the long and short of today’s Supreme Court action in Melbourne where industry regulator – au Domain Administration Ltd – failed to overturn an emergency injunction granted to Bolton’s company – Australian Style Ltd.
The injunction will stand, at least until a trial is held, on or about June 24th this year.
auDA’s authority as an industry regulator is clearly diminished by the Court’s decision, and the judgment of both auDA chief executive,
Chris Disspain, and auDA’s legal advisers at Maddocks will no doubt be subject to some scrutiny.
That’s because auDA should have been able to strip Bolton of Bottle’s license without any difficulty
After all, there is no doubt that there has been a serious security breach at Bottle Domains.
Indeed the Court heard that Bolton has admitted details of some 5000 customer’s credit cards were lost.
The Court also heard that auDA only found out about the security breach from the Australian Federal Police.
auDA certainly didn’t hear about it from Bottle or Bolton.
However the Court clearly has some sympathy with Bolton’s argument that auDA’s reason for de-licensing Bottle Domains, namely that Bolton should have disclosed the security breach back in 2007, when it happened, is based on the false premise that he knew about the security breach.
The Court heard that back in 2007, Bolton had been phoned by Ryan Tabbara, owner of Perth based registrar – Aust Domains.
Tabbara told Bolton that one of his (i.e. Tabbara’s) staff had discovered a security flaw in the system that both Aust Domains and Bottle were using. A small amount of data had been downloaded for testing purposes.
Tabbara apparently also supplied Bolton with a patch for the flaw and that, according to Bolton, was all he knew of it.
However earlier this year it has become clear that much more than just test data was downloaded.
Indeed, as we’ve previously reported, some 60,000 records were lost, and then offered for sale on the Internet.
For more information go to
www.auda.org.au
www.bottledomains.com.au
www.austdomains.com.au
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