I have given Hal Lubsen repeated opportunities over many months to explain why his
company DomainBank abused the contracts and procedures of Afilias, of which Hal Lubsen
is CEO.I have provided the evidence that the company submitted many many applications
with no eligibility at all, and "NONE" put in the four data fields where Trademark
details were mandatory. He cannot refute this, because its on his own WHOIS.
The
consequences of this scam was the defrauding of legitimate customers who lost the
investment they had made to get the same names.
Furthermore, I have the documentation
of the $15000 of billing which was the sum Hal Lubsen's company charged to submit
the FAKE applications.
Furthermore, I have the documentation of over 20 requests
from the original registrant who, when he realised other customers were going to
be defrauded at Landrush, asked Hal Lubsen to delete his FAKE names so that they
could be released to honest customers.
I have repeatedly asked Hal Lubsen to explain
why these deletion requests were ignored.
I have repeatedly asked Hal Lubsen to
justify money being charged to submit totally ineligible applications.
I have repeatedly
asked Hal Lubsen to justify this abuse of the Afilias Sunrise process.
Hal Lubsen
belongs to forums where these concerns have been expressed (check the list for the
gTLDs Registries forum at ICANN - he is one of 70 subscribers).
For the CEO of
a major Registry to fail to answer these very serious and very fair concerns, is
an abdication of responsibility and a total evasion of that transparency for which
this forum was set up.
In my view Hal Lubsen is discredited - and it discredits
Afilias, and ICANN who have presided over this unchecked neglect of customers interests.
All
we are asking is open dialogue with Hal Lubsen.
But he doesn't answer, he doesn't
explain, he doesn't justify.
Why were these names all submitted? For whose advantage?
And why were the contractual rules broken? It's ICANN's contract, so does ICANN condone
what happened? Do they condone the Afilias Director whose company made 4981 fake
Sunrise applications and charged $500,000 - even though the original registrant admitted
they were fake? Does ICANN condone the other Afilias Director who gained three names
for her company through the submission of fake Trademark numbers for non-existent
Trademarks. Six months after Hawaii.info and Maui.info were registered with fake
info, and five months after Govinda.info was registered in the same way, Afilias
Director Govinda Leopold still retains these names through her company 1stDomainNet.
No
wonder honest Afilias Director, Robert Connelly, decided he had to resign his position
and interests because of this Sunrise disgrace, which he called "an abomination".
But
my primary questions are directed to Hal Lubsen.
You are the CEO of a major Registry.
You
have a complete responsibility to explain and justify the extraordinary and unchecked
abuses of your own procedures, which gained money for Afilias-linked registrars,
but which resulted in losses for the defrauded Landrush customers estimated to be
in excess of $3million.
To the customers who legitimately followed your own procedures
and were defrauded, your silence seems arrogant and unacceptable, Hal.