"And, as for the charging of pre-registration or "submit" fees, that is also something
beyond the control of Afilias. Anyone's beef in this regard should be directed
toward the registrar in question, not Afilias. Some registrars are charging
those fees, some are not. Perhaps, as I mentioned in another post, it's time
to turn up the heat on those registrars that are guilty of taking pre-registration/submit
fees for names that were taken during sunrise..."So it's time to turn the heat
(to use your phrase) on Hal Lubsen CEO of Afilias, whose company Domain Bank continued
to charge pre-registration fees for names taken during sunrise throughout the entire
Sunrise period. The day after sunrise ended Domain Bank was still saying names were
"Available" even though they'd been taken as Trademark names.
Domain Bank were
charging something for nothing... is that legal?
Any more legal than the Afilias
Board member whose company gained Hawaii.info and Maui.info by faking the trademark
numbers?
And should Afilias be condoned for failing to police its own system, accepting
thousands of facially ineligible applications, then refusing to adopt workable solutions
to resolve the situation?
At its very simplest : if customers paid pre-registration
fees for HAWAII.info through various registrars, does not Afilias have a TOTAL responsibility
to DELETE the fraudulent claim made for its own Board Member, and to delete it NOW,
so as to safeguard the money paid by customers for the chance to win it?
And this
example can be reasserted for thousands of other names.
People's "beef" should
indeed "be directed" towards Afilias!
They have the power (under their TLD agreement
with ICANN) to delete any of these names, but they choose not to, and their failure
to do so results in the defrauding of thousands of customers.
THAT'S why Afilias
has clear responsibility and why they are a disgrace.
There may be a case against
individual registrars (like Hal Lubsen) but it is Afilias who refuse to take steps
to protect the integrity of their own Landrush system.
They could delete facially
ineligible names. They could adopt "Domebase".
They do neither.
Their (lucrative)
business strategy is more important than their customers.