Hmmm.... Did I misread something in my happiness over ICANN/Afilias' announcement?"...the
(Afilias) registry itself will submit a challenge against any of these facially unqualified
sunrise registrations that are not challenged by others. The names that are cancelled
due to the registry's challenges will be returned to the pool of available names
at a later time."
So Afilias will not place challenges against these fraudulent
Sunrise domain names until AFTER the Sunrise Challenge period, 120 days from August
28th. And then any names Afilias does challenge will be returned to the unregistered
pool, but there is no mention of how those names can be registered by the Public.
Will Afilias re-run the Land-Rush round-robin to award Public registrations?
Or will Afilias just quietly dump the names in the bucket and wash its hands of the
affair.
And if Afilias will only challenge trademarks which are "facially unqualified",
that means that another fraudulent registrant can enter a Sunrise Challenge, kick
out the guy who had a trademark date of "2040", enter his own new fraudulent trademark
data as the next Sunrise registrant, but using "facially qualified" trademark data,
and then be immune to challenge by Afilias.
So NONE of the problem is solved AT
ALL. NONE of the fraudulently registered .info domain names will be made available
to Start-Up (Land-Rush) registrants. There is NO remedy for non-trademark holders
through the Sunrise Challenge process; not even through today's announced actions
by Afilias.
I'm afraid that a second look at Afilias plan reveals that it's the
weakest action Afilias could have taken, short of nothing at all.
Shame on Afilias.
Shame on ICANN. This time, "No Thanks".