I've long been a supporter of the crs/domebase solution. And I'm not a huge
fan of Afilias. However, it has become clear to me that Afilias's mini-land
rush solution is the best way to go.1. The crs/domebase solution has two
flaws, one more significant than the other.
2. The smaller flaw is that it
cannot guarantee that all improperly seized domain names are challenged. For
example, "humanresourcesmanagement.info" and "manufacturingsystems.info" were improperly
taken, but would anyone else be on any landrush queues for these? If not, there
would be no challenge and these SLDs would remain wrongfully taken.
3. The
bigger flaw is that the crs/domebase solution EXCLUDES all persons who might have
wanted to purchase landrush queue positions in the 1 1/2 month period after August
1 (after the 1st Sunrise queue was processed).
4. The above problem happens
because all properly run registrar queues do an EPP check with Afilias/WHOIS before
allowing a name to be entered onto the queue. This has a big impact:
While many of us purchased our queue positions before August 1 (when there was nothing
in the WHOIS database to check against), those who want to purchase queue positions
since August 1 cannot, because they will be rejected in light of the wronfully assigned
SLDs. Thus, if I wanted to get on a queue for the SLD "humanresourcesmanagement.info,"
I could not, because an EPP/WHOIS check would reject it. (I've tried as a test,
and can confirm that this is so. You should try yourself on, say, catalog.com,
which now takes multiple copies of SLD requests)
5. So, while those of us
(including me) on queues prior to August 1 might be happy with the crs/domebase proposal,
it improperly EXCLUDES any innocents who happen along after August 1. Exclusion
for this entire 1 1/2 month period is not fair.
6. The Afilias mini-land
rush proposal does not have these drawbacks for the following reasons:
7.
First, Afilias can essentially use the wrongdoers own money to challenge them (which
is cool). With all the information it has been provided, it could conceivably
challenge more names than would even have been challenged in the crs/domebase proposal.
Moreover, even if Afilias misses some names, the same could have happened anyway.
8.
Second, and more importantly, once Afilias captures back the challenged domain names,
they will no longer show up on WHOIS. Therefore, assuming a 2 or 4 week period
after challenge completion and before mini-land rush is run again, those people who
came along after August 1 would, in fact, be given a chance to get on a queue (assuming
the queue was not already sold out, and remember that some queues sell multiple copies
anyway, like catalog.com).
So, bottom line, I now favor the mini-land rush idea
for its greater fairness to all, early-birds and latecomers alike.