The argument put forth by
John Wasko with respect to the
delegation of American Samoa's ccTLD rests on the
assumption
that domain names based on the ISO-3166 list are the property
of
the country or territory involved (and hence it's government).As has been pointed
out in other posts in this forum and by
both ICANN and IANA, this assumption has
never been held to
be true.
Without this assumption as the foundation for his
arguments,
Mr. Wasko's claims that the .as ccTLD has been pirated
have no
basis. As ICANN has recently informed the American
Samoa Government, Mr.
Matua was granted the delegation in mid
1997, and there was no need for, nor any
input received from, the
American Samoa government prior to the issuance of the
delegation.
Mr. Wasko's description of the local furor which has erupted over the
wild
and inaccurate claims made in the WIRED article is mostly
accurate, although incomplete.
What he fails to mention is
that he was one of the Principals behind the furor,
as well as a major
contributor to the Hearings which were held. He also
apparently
dissuaded the Local legislature from even making the effort to contact
Mr.
Matua for testimony on the matter, which made the hearings
a very one-sided and
incomplete undertaking, to say the least.
In the interests of full disclosure,
it should be noted that my firm
is under contract with Mr. Matua to provide the
technical services
for ASNIC. It should also be noted for the record that
Mr. Wasko's
motives in this matter are not entirely pure, as he attempted to
PURCHASE
the .as ccTLD for himself from NetNames International
(then the technical services
provider) on two separate occasions in
1998, presumably without the knowledge
or approval of the America
Samoa Government.