Music.mobi “Winner” Vows Lawsuit Against Sedo

[xmax22]

After auction extended, former “winner” feels cheated.

Constantine Giorgio Roussos thought he was the winner of Music.mobi in yesterday’s .mobi auction at sedo. He bid $66,000. The auction ended and he received an automated invoice from Sedo. He then received a “personal” e-mail from a Sedo employee (which also may have been automated). But then something happened. Sedo extended the auction due to a server slowdown in the final minutes of the auction.
Instead of extending the auction for five minutes, Sedo extended it for 2 1/2 hours. A notice on the company’s site reads:

We are aware the there are some problems with the .MOBI Auction at this time. Due the down time we were not able to extend the auction before the set closing time. Some bidders may have received emails saying that they have won the auction, however because the system was down the highest bid at the time the system failed are not binding according to our terms and conditions. The auction will be up and running very shortly and will be extended by until 3:30pm EST to ensure all interested parties can place their bids. While this is unfortunate, the good news is that the problems are due to the large number of last minute bidders! This is the first time an auction has brought down our servers due to such a large amount of activity.

Roussos claims that the company’s terms of service aren’t legal. On his mobi.music.us site, he says:

Hello everyone. As you may well have heard I was one of the original winners of the .mobi domains held at SEDO. I won Music.mobi and was confirmed the winner via 2 emails and invoiced, later to find out that SEDO and the MTLD orchestrated an illegal move to maximize their revenues and advertise a second auction. They claimed this was because their servers were slow in the last few minutes of the 7-day auction claiming that they could do this according to their Terms of Service / Conditions. They can claim anything but it does not mean the TOS is legal. (emphasis added)

In an email to Domain Name Wire, Roussos wrote “I am suing personally for music.mobi and doing a class lawsuit too.”
According to a post at NamePros, Roussos is upset that he was outbid by “new” bidders who were not involved in the original auction. However, we all know that most bidders wait until the last minutes of an auction to place their bids.
I certainly understand Roussos’ frustrations. But his challenge that Sedo’s Terms of Service are not legal may be difficult to prove.
On perhaps a more controversial note, the winning bidder for over $1M of the domains in the Sedo auction claims he bought them for resale. The original .mobi auction at Sedo required buyers to create a web site at the domains within 6 months. I’m not sure if later auctions required this. Regardless, this is unwelcome news for .mobi fans — they would have preferred to hear that end users snapped up these domains at astronomical prices.




http://domainnamewire.com/2007/12/07...-against-sedo/

[TheLegendaryJP]

Should be interesting.

[Devil Dog]

Im thinking, what if bidders 12 and 13 were attempting to bid at the last minute of the original auction when the site had issues?
If so, and sedo shows proof of this, then the lawsuit really has no merit.

[CyrusL]

This should be interesting.

[sasquatch]

[B]Regardless, this is unwelcome news for .mobi fans — they would have preferred to hear that end users snapped up these domains at astronomical prices.

Expressions "end users" and "astronomical prices" just don't go together in the same sentence. Ever! 100x so in .mobi cases.

[Acro]

The dog ate my Internet connection.

[Raider]

When he won the auction for 66K... Did the seconds count down to zero with no other bids?

[PRED]

The dog ate my Internet connection.

Classic.
Sometimes it's obvious you grew up on British Humour, Acro

[Acro]

Classic.
Sometimes it's obvious you grew up on British TV, Acro

Lots of Benny Hill, The Young Ones, Black Adder and other BBC classics. That's why I'm so damaged

[whitebark]

If the servers were unresponsive for a matter of minutes - why did they extend the auction for over two hours?

[James Jean]

sedo is ran by monkeys

[Makis77]

since he got the winning bid email and the pdf invoice then i cant understand why sedo reverted the auction

[Fearless]

The guy should be thrilled he didn't get stuck with a $66K bill for a .mobi.

[shambles]

sounds like he just wants a cheap pick up or he's hoping to whine and have them pay him off. i don't see what might be illegal or even unfair in sedo's conditions of sale. as for extending the auction for 5 mins, how long they choose to extend it for in theory is pretty much irrelevant - it was always going to get auto-extended repeatedly at the end.

[sashas]

sounds like he just wants a cheap pick up or he's hoping to whine and have them pay him off. i don't see what might be illegal or even unfair in sedo's conditions of sale. as for extending the auction for 5 mins, how long they choose to extend it for in theory is pretty much irrelevant - it was always going to get auto-extended repeatedly at the end.

just some advice: don't go to a law school anytime soon

[Focus]

sounds like he just wants a cheap pick up or he's hoping to whine and have them pay him off. i don't see what might be illegal or even unfair in sedo's conditions of sale. as for extending the auction for 5 mins, how long they choose to extend it for in theory is pretty much irrelevant - it was always going to get auto-extended repeatedly at the end.

umm....when you win an auction for tens of thousands of dollars for an unproven extension, you normally expect a venue like sedo.com to at least honor your winning bid...my personal feeling is they scrambled after the auction and decided on the fly they would extend it and make more money...this might make it worse for an already doomed extension with no real use..this is gonna drag on for a long time imo

[shambles]

just some advice: don't go to a law school anytime soon

aha i presume you have studied German Federal and Munich law then.

i always find it rather amusing when people start talking about contract law in foreign jurisdictions.

[gingeman]

The guy should be thrilled he didn't get stuck with a $66K bill for a .mobi.

true.

However, the corruption in this industry is rife and sedo is hardly innocent here. They claim they extend the auction for the benefit of those who missed out- those people could have bid anytime- it should be a lesson on waiting to the death. I think what sedo have done is completely unethical. Whether its illegal or not is another matter, but I hope they get repremanded for this behaviour. If I was Giorgio Roussos, I'd want blood over this too.

[sashas]

true.

However, the corruption in this industry is rife and sedo is hardly innocent here. They claim they extend the auction for the benefit of those who missed out- those people could have bid anytime- it should be a lesson on waiting to the death. I think what sedo have done is completely unethical. Whether its illegal or not is another matter, but I hope they get repremanded for this behaviour. If I was Giorgio Roussos, I'd want blood over this too.

This Giorgio Roussos guy certainly seems serious about going for Sedo's ass. He has made huge announcements everywhere and he seems to have the finances to do so.

If this does go to court and Sedo does lose the case, I think we'll see a huge change in the industry - which is a good thing - and there'll at least be more transparency.

[jasdon11]

Consider this hypothetical scenario:

sedo awarded the name to someone who was 'leading' the auction before it crashed. What about the people who were yet to bid. They would be the ones shouting 'unfair' now, and they would no doubt be thinking of litigation. So sedo has nothing to gain by doing so - damned if they do, damned if they don't.

The fact remains, the auction was set to finish at a set earliest time, ie at some point after a set time, not before. Whoever was leading before that set time is totally, absolutely, 100%, irrelevent. What if it crashed 5 minutes before it did - then you'd be looking at another set of disgruntled bidders - 5 minutes before, another set, and so on....