My emails this morning indicate that more registrars
are refunding prepayments which we were asked to make prior to Landrush.I am wondering
whether, in the media silence for which Afilias Ltd. is now infamous, the company's
approved registrars have been advised to return prepayment fees to Landrushers who
bought preregistrations for disputed names.
My concern is that when Afilias Ltd's.
business partners have returned customers fees - minus admin charges - Afilias Ltd's.
Board of Directors will have satisfied themselves, by their own apparently corrupted
ethics and business practises, that the way is clear for a Landrush II style showcase
of challenged names, for which everyone can again pay preregistration and I assume
prepayment fees for another round robin draw.
I assume that this will occur after
the executives of Afilias Ltd. have spent a small fortune trumpeting the fact that
they have completed a glorious challenge process against all the horrid frauds who
were not worthy of Afilias's trust to enter bona fide TM details in their Sunrise
applications, and after a media campaign heralding the greatest domain space opportunity
to ever be offered the Internet community.
After all, the 6,000 odd names left
after the removal of Plankenstein's four and half thousand Austrian place names,
represent the best generics across all the business, education and recreation sectors.
I
wouldn't be surprised if the original Landrushers are outnumbered 2:1 or more when
"the public" join Landrush II.
The way in which the .info rollout has been conducted
continues to make me feel sick and the standards that the executives of Afilias Ltd.
have set for registry management would have had them lynched in days gone by and
should have had them lose their ICANN Registry license had "the public benefit corporation"
entrusted by the US Congress with DNS administration been true to its charter.
An
explanation for Afilias Ltds. abominable performance and the fact that it remains
the company permitted to manage the .info registry may be that a culture of self
interest rather than public interest has developed between those entrusted to regulate
the system and those with the privilege to operate the system.
I suspect that there
are registrars who are treated by ICANN as outsiders, just as there are Afilias Ltd.
customers who are treated as outsiders - with there being one set of rules for insiders
and another carrying none of the insider privileges for outsiders.
As the evidence
grows that such a corrupt culture exists and operates for the benefit of the few,
the need grows for those responsible to be called to explain the decisions and operating
principles of ICANN and for legal action to be taken where appropriate against those
responsible for the fiasco of appointing Afilias Ltd. the .info registry and the
fiasco of the .info rollout.