Glitch hammers Australian domain name auction - News - Business

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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Glitch hammers Australian domain name auction

By James Pearce, ZDNet Australia
April 09, 2002
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/business/soa/Glitch-hammers-Australian-domain-name-auction/0,139023166,120264473,00.htm

The first auction for Australian generic domain names has become embroiled in controversy after -technical glitches" will see some auctions having to be run again.

One auction that was supposed to end at 5.00pm on Friday April 5 continued till 5.05 pm, according to a bidder who contacted ZDNet Australia. -In the last five minutes bidding went from AU$500 to AU$6,500," he said.

On Monday a brief e-mail was sent from the au Domain Administration (auDA) to participants in the -apartments.com.au" auction advising of the failure to close at 5.00pm and informing of a new auction to be held on Wednesday April 10 from 9.00am till 5.00pm.

Two hours later a second e-mail from Chris Disspain, CEO of auDA, was sent in response to complaints concerning the new auctions. One complainant claimed to be the winning bidder at both 5.00pm and 5.05pm, and a second complainant claimed to be the winning bidder at 5.00pm. Both complainants claimed they had the rights to the name.

The second e-mail went on to say -there was a technical problem that prevented some bidders having access to the auction immediately prior to the 5.00 pm deadline. This resulted in the deadline being extended by a few minutes but bidders were not made aware of this extension and accordingly in an effort to be fair and reasonable to everyone concerned I have decided to run the auction again."

A spokesperson for Stuff.com.au, the online auction site that provided the infrastructure for the auctions, denied any technical glitches from its end. -There were definitely no technical problems with the auction on Friday," he said.

Disspain declined to give any details of the glitch, except to say the problem had been fixed. -It had nothing to do with the system, it was actually to do with the behaviour of a single user, but I'm not going any further than that," he said.

Disspain has downplayed the problems with the auctions. -There are a whole series of auctions," he said. -Over the 30 or so that we run, we might run one or two again because of technical glitches."