My former business partner and I have been going through the same BS with Mr. York. In September 2002 John Kolesinski registered myflorida411.com and set it up to be a commercial telephone directory. At that time the state did not have copyright on myflorida.com; they filed in 2003 for copyright, to be granted back to 2000, for myflorida.com. Mr. Kolesinski continued the domain name, and only received a few notices around 2005 regarding "cease and desist". The state filed a case against him around September 2006 after he had renewed the domain name, only after having lost it for a month while being hospitalized. He had broken his neck. When he got out he renewed his domains and the state decided at that time they had a case as the original registration date of 2002 was no longer on the DNS record.The state filed an ICANN dispute, and GoDaddy locked the domain. The domain remained locked as Mr. Kolesinski could not afford proper legal representation. He requested assistance from the local court, but as it was a conflict of interest therefore nothing moved forward. The state was claiming "similar name" reasons. Regardless the domain remain locked.Where do I come into play? John Kolesinski was a good friend of mine, and business partner, having known him for 10 or so years. He was a web design/marketing professional by trade and I am a network/systems administrator. I maintained his web server and had a few domain hosted on it as compensation. In May 2007 John passed away, at 37, and as his business partner all his domains and his web server were transferred to me by his closest family.
At that time I noticed that he had owned myflorida411.net, and was contacted my Mr. York. I told him that the domain was of no interest and offered to transfer it to the state as it was expiring in two months. I initiated a domain transfer to freddy.martinez@myflorida.com as Mr. York specified, but the state did not accept the transfer. After the initial transfer failed, I left it alone. Mr. York contacted me again and asked about the domain status. I informed him that they did not accept the initial transfer and I would try again. They did not accept a second time, now I noticed they had no true interest in the domain, so I renewed it for one year.
I was contacted around Christmas again by Mr. York, this time I informed him that since the state did not accept two transfers, I decided to renew the domain and if they were interested it was for sale. He stated they "may" be able to pay for the domain registration fees but nothing more. I stated they were available for 15k each. He was furious.Roll the clock forward. I renewed the domains for one year in 2008, no contact or dispute. An attempt to use GoDaddy’s "advertising revenue" parked pages led to a drop of all "advertising revenue" pages under that GoDaddy account. When I inquired they stated it was a copyright infringement. I notified them that only two of the 5 domains registered under the account were myflorida related, they stated they had to lock all the accounts out of the revenue pages as there was no way to do an individual account. Score one for Mr. York.In 2009 I renewed the domains for two years, both myflorida411.com and .net. As the domains were 411, which means information, I put up a couple of parked pages with news feeds and advertisements from Google. This is in line with the 411 meaning and it would be better than "parked" pages where GoDaddy makes the revenue. In September 2009 I received a "request to update ICANN" data on the myflorida411 domains. I updated one, but GoDaddy locked the other before I could change it. The data was correct as I reside in two states, but they wanted it for other reasons. A few days later after asking GoDaddy why the domains were locked they stated a dispute was put forth by WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization.WIPO is located out of Switzerland, a country which claims neutrality but after recent events between the U.S. and bank account holders, I highly doubt they are truley neutral. Mr. York is claiming "cybersquatting" and "copyright infringement". The cybersquatting claim gets the case expedited service with WIPO. I just received the 100 or so page claim yesterday, and noticed a bunch of signed statements from other departments in Florida claiming domain use, etc. They even included a 9 year old resume of mine, something they would have obtained from a child support case; meaning they dug into state records about me. There is also a $1500 fee the state had to pay to get the case heard, another waste of taxpayer money. I am working on the rebuttal now, having only 20-days to do so. I plan on sharing it with everyone and anyone. I am currently out of work, having nothing better to do with my time than fight Mr. York. The domain has been in our ownership since September 2002, with a minor lapse in registration due to medical issues in 2006. I will be posting full disclosure to this site, and many others, how the case progresses and ends.States have state.us or state.gov for official domains, any use of a .com is for commercial purposes and you can’t go after everyone. Funny how a preliminary search shows that the "Department of Management Services" in Florida owns 180 other domains, and there DNS records show close to 250 domains. Talk about cybersquatting?If anyone here can help with other examples of cases regarding state domain disputes, please contact me. I want to cover all avenues on this. The state had no right to take the domain back in 2006, having never stated a real reason for the initial ICANN lock. Now they are using an international party to do the same.
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