What’s Wrong With Y4.com? It’s Not Registered & Blocked By The Registry

by

So I was checking around for some domains and found Y4.com is unregistered, and seems to be blocked by the registry for registration.

It’s the first domain I have seen come back with such a whois result in a long time.

Back when NSI was the only registry they blocked the registration of  any domain containing one of the 7 dirty words made famous by George Carlin. (although some slipped in)

In the raw whois search the domain Y4.com comes back as:

“”””Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.

No match for “Y4.COM”.

Last update of whois database: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 22:07:41 UTC””

If you search for the domain at Godaddy.com it comes back as:

“”Y4.COM is an invalid domain name.”
Go ahead check on it

I checked for all other yN.com’s using 1-9 and all are registered as you would expect, except for Y4.com.
Note this is not a domain reserved like one letter .com such as Y.com which comes back with as whois as follows:
“”
Domain Name: Y.COM
Registrar: RESERVED-INTERNET ASSIGNED NUMBERS AUTHORITY
Whois Server: whois.iana.org
Referral URL: http://res-dom.iana.org
Name Server: No nameserver
Status: serverDeleteProhibited
Status: serverTransferProhibited
Status: serverUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 09-dec-2008
Creation Date: 01-dec-1993
Expiration Date: 08-dec-2009

>>> Last update of whois database: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 22:11:16 UTC”””

So the question is what’s wrong with Y4.com and why can’t it be registered?

Anyone know?

Anyone know of other .com’s which are blocked by the registry?
I own Y4.org and another party owns Y4.net, so what’s wrong with Y4.com?


How can the registry block this domain from registration?

About Michael Berkens

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 8K domain names . Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest.

Comments

  1. dcmike77 says

    Not sure, but how excited were you for the brief second you thought it might be available for reg?

    🙂

  3. cartoonz says

    2 character names will not be re-released once deleted from the com/net (and maybe .org) zone, per a change in policy made a few years ago.

    This particular name does have a registration history and seems to have not been renewed last September, putting it in this status.

    We don’t see this very often due to the lateral transfer fulfillment methods used by most Registrars today, but that is what happened with this one.

    2c.net is another one that went down this road.

    …not that I know anything about things like this… haha

  4. MHB says

    So any LL domain if not renewed isn’t going to go to NJ or GD for auction they are just going to be unavailable?

    They are not reserved just unavailable.

    By whose authority was that call made?

  7. cartoonz says

    and it is only the ones that get DELETED, not the ones that go to NameJet or the like for lateral transfer.

    Once the Registry gets the Delete command (and maybe after a mandatory Redemtion period) it simply becomes unavailable to register again

  8. Aron says

    Yep,

    all LL names, once expired are lost forever.

    What a nightmare to have one and let it slip by.

    Aron
    XF.com

  9. MHB says

    And what stops ICANN from adding three letter .com to the list of domains that become unavailable tomorrow if deleted?

  10. Patrick McDermott says

    MHB,

    I remember from some time ago when I came across the same situation that any
    2 character domains that drop are permanently removed from the registration pool.

    Supposedly this provision was put in place to avoid any confusion with Country Code domains which are of course 2 characters.

    Sorry I don’t have any references to point you to at this time.

  11. MHB says

    Patrick

    There is no country code which is a combo of letters and numbers.

    It’ not that I don’t believe you guys, I just never heard of this and don’t think its right

  12. Chris Beach says

    Doesn’t that rule only apply to two letter domains, not two character? I believe it also only applies to the .ORG registry. That is, LL.org domains do not return to the pool, but everything else does, including LL.com, NL.com, LN.com and NN.com.

    As for Y4.com, it was registered until 2008 (see below) to RegistrarAds Inc of Vancouver.

    There was a time when the registry would place domains that were involved in unresolved disputes into a hold state, and many of these got stuck in limbo for years.

  13. MHB says

    Chris

    If they were frozen by the registry they should show something in the whois other than not taken or not available.

  14. jp says

    Good news MHB, and everybody else, this news makes your 2 letter com net & orgs more valuable. Not only are they rare, but fragile too.

  16. Jamie Zoch says

    Hi Michael,

    The Godaddy search part has been that way since at least I started domaining. Any two letter or two character searched for will give you the same result. “Invalid domain name”

  17. Andrew says

    Right, it’s because of the country codes, which is why it’s limited to two character domains. Why a LN wouldn’t be registrable doesn’t make since, though.

  19. Patrick McDermott says

    “LL.org domains do not return to the pool, but everything else does, including LL.com, NL.com, LN.com and NN.com.”

    Chris,

    I do not believe that is correct.

    I’m pretty sure any 2 character .COM domains that are allowed to expire…are gone for good.

    Maybe in the future it will change and 2 character domains will be available again.

  21. Fab says

    The same thing happened to me when I saw yo.org dropped years ago. I couldn’t believe it was available when doing a search for yo.com at godaddy and other registrars. It listed yo.org as available and ready for registration.

    Too bad it gave me an invalid domain name error when I tried to register it 😛

  22. tonecas says

    The other question for me is: who the hell is RegistrarAds?

    They have a big portfolio that has been month after month sold out since last year and for what i understand and read on the web they are a company connected to Dotster that “likes” to keep expired domains from their previous owners. There have been reported complaints of wharehousing from registrar companies but this keeps on going…

    In the case of Y4.com it was registered to InfoMedia Publishing Group. On September of 2007 they did not renewed it. The domain then went to the 30/35 days that Dotster gives to renew the domain and then the domain was not drop but kept on, i suspect, in the “Dotster universe” by using a privacy whois (@privacypost.com).

    Then, on Jun08, the domain publicly “reapeared” in the hands of RegistrarAds, Inc. Finally, and this is the most strange, they let the the domain drop. They did not let it go to an auction on SnapNames like they use to nowadays. They did not renew it. Nothing.

    I see them making strange things like puting a domain directly in Pending Delete instead of letting it go to SnapNames and make some bucks but this one was the top one.

    All this could make a great story 😐