ICANN Places Demand Media Domain Registrar eNom Under Investigation

By Demand Studios Review Editorial

UPDATE (9/18/10): Demand Media has entered into an agreement with LegitScript LLC to help identify and eliminate anyone violating the company's terms of service by operating an online pharmacy. Read more here.

Posted on 9/9/10:

Many people don’t know that Demand Media is not only in the business of content creation, but also makes a good bit of money in the domain registration game. In fact, their domain name registrar eNom is the second largest in the world.

Demand Media has come under fire recently after a report from HostExploit, a volunteer anti-malware group, discovered that they are allegedly host to an alarmingly large number of malicious sites.

It turns out that eNom is a favorite registration company for pharmaceutical spammers, who are in some cases apparently peddling counterfeit drugs as well as harmful software to unsuspecting Internet users.

HostExploit’s report named eNom the worst ISP for the second quarter of 2010. This dubious distinction has caused ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) to place the company under investigation. They are currently waiting for Demand Media to provide answers before taking further actions, if any such actions are warranted.

The troubles don’t stop there, however, as now  the White House is asking for answers of their own.

A meeting is set for September 29^th, to be conducted with ICANN, Demand Media representatives and representatives of other questionable domain name registrars.

 It appears Andrew J. Klein, White House Senior Advisor for Intellectual Property Enforcement, will oversee the proceedings.

This is bad news for Demand Media, who are already under a harsh spotlight in light of their recent IPO filing. The filing showed that Demand Media has failed to be profitable the last four years.

While  some have pointed out that they haven’t been profitable due to reinvesting in the business, and could have climbed out of the red and into the black had they decided to do so, the report has still made for plenty of bad press.

This won’t make things easier for them in the media by any means.

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