crown.com.au was supposed to have dropped on 17 June 2023, but was somehow restored shortly after the public Drop.com.au expired domain auction ended. The domain was restored with less than 30 mins to go before it was scheduled to be released.
Who could have done this on a Saturday?
The only answer is, some one high up with authority at Webcentral/Melbourne IT. Someone potentially willing to break auDA rules once they realised how much the auction ended at, which was a record breaking amount of $250,000.
Here is where it gets interesting, the CEO of Melbourne IT Jonathan Horne based on server tracking logged in at Drop.com.au after the end of the auction and within 10 minutes the domain was restored. We are not saying he did this but it sure looks like an interesting coincidence especially when only someone high up with authority at the Registrar could do this, as normal support staff would not have the clearance or ability.
Domain names get restored often by end users, when they have fixed any issues, however in this case it is clear that the registrant did not do this right after the drop, the registrant entity is still Cancelled so they should not be allowed to have been restored by the registrar.
So the questions we have, did Melbourne IT and their CEO Jonathan Horne intentionally breach auDA policies on this domain? What justification did they have to restore a domain that still have a cancelled entity and their eligibility under auDA policies are clear that they can not.
And finally what is auDA going to do when a Registrar like this seems to be blatantly breaching policies with ill intent?
Feel free to comment here or on thread on linkedin.
If this is true that is very disappointing. As an ASX listed company, the CEO of Melbourne IT/Webcentral needs to be held accountable and come out on record as to what happened and why, as higher standards apply to such CEOs to help protect shareholders. It is unthinkable that someone would use their position to breach auDA policies and put their Registrar Accreditation at risk. The risk to their reputation is worth far more than what that single domain would even make.