Spoke to a registrar today, and they informed me that Afilias
is now proposing what they are calling a "Mini LandRush" which they will hold after
they recover the bogus registrations. The plan is that registrars at their own discretion
will allow people who have already reserved a place in their queues to retain that
priority for the "Mini LandRush" This should become official within the next few
days.
Two comments that I would like to make:
First I knew this had to be coming
(re: my post last Friday), I also still believe that they will switch to a Pay-to-Play
.BIZ style auction for what I labelled LandRush-2 or the "Real event"
The problem
here is that Afilias does not want to acknowledge the extent of the damage handed
to the September 12th LandRush event. My guess is less than 10% of all LandRush pre-registrations
done over the past 6 weeks still remain unregistered. I also believe that there will
be a final aggressive wave of bogus SunRise claims as the August 27th deadline draws
closer.
Assuming some 20,000+ names have been taken by then, I think LandRush
will result in fewer than 3000 names being registered. And assuming Afilias recovers
90% of the SunRise names, then what they are labelling as the Mini-LandRush will
be in reality the BIG event or as I call the "Real Event"
Maybe all is not lost,
however given their track record so far I won't be surprised if they manage to mess
things up even more.
Personally I still believe that the September 12th event
should be scrapped and we go for the real event after they recover the names.
Either
way we should focus on LR2 and make sure that this time around we don't get side-swiped
by some of those rogue registrars and their "closed lists".....