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Username: antipathy
Date/Time: Sat, January 19, 2002 at 2:19 AM GMT
Browser: Netscape Communicator V4.74 using Windows 98
Subject: What sort of cowboy outfits are ICANN and Afilias Ltd.?

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What sort of cowboy outfits are we dealing with, when six months after the events of the .info launch, the Landrushers who paid millions for preregistrations are still waiting for advice from someone in authority as to the nature of the standing that the Landrushers will have when the 10,000 challenged names, registered by the "after the event" registry Afilias are "equitably" returned to the public?

"Returned to the public" - that would be the Landrushers, wouldn't it?

Surely it is to the Landrushers - who have already paid millions to Afilias registrars* for a chance to register the 10,000 names Afilias registered to Sunrisers despite the applicants' ineligibility to participate in the Sunrise - that the challenged names should be returned.

*(except maybe 007Names for whom no one has yet to show me a registration for anyone other than Mustard Seed)

If Afilias is ethical and accountable, there will be no announcements about the details of a new lottery for the 10,000 names which Afilias and its registrars have pocketed money from the Sunrise applicants, the same names which enriched the Afilias registrars through the hundreds of thousands or millions of applications from Landrushers.

After all, it was only with the complicity of the .info registry Afilias and its registrars that 10,000 ineligible Sunrise applications were processed into "inappropriate registrations" (doesn't Roland have a quaint turn of phrase!), removing thousands of the most prized names from the Landrush lottery.

Currently a whole class of customer - the Landrushers who were not moved by the urgings of the likes of SpyProductions (there you go Lars, I have mentioned you again - suck on it!) to commit TM fraud (although Lorenz proved you didn't even have to do that to cheat in the .info Sunrise) - have been left to swing in the breeze.

In what other industry would thousands of customers, out of pocket to the tune of millions of dollars due to the actions or inactions of a company and the industry regulatory authority, be left with apparently no redress and little hope that those with responsibility for appointing the executive of the regulator will do anything to establish public trust in the authority and protect the broad Internet community from the types of conduct which have characterised the Afilias .info launch?

I think the fact that the .info Landrushers have been forgotten (you just try to find a mention of the word "Landrush" in anything coming out of Afilias since Sunrise) typifies the corruption of the DNS's current administration for which the likes of Stuart Lynn and Vint Cerf must bear full responsibility.

I don't see how ICANN will ever have any public credibility as long as Lynn and Cerf - who brought us the Afilias fiasco - control ICANN.

I don't see how the public will trust a registry or the  majority of registrars when it is known that that the DNS is effectively self regulating - as evidenced by the abomination of the .info launch - apparently only for the benefit of the insiders so that a crooked or inept registry or registrar can do what they pretty much like, without fear of censure or penalty.

I don't see the interests of the broad Internet community ever being served as long as those who currently head ICANN condone the conduct of  Afilias across a range of failures but most particularly in regard to the manner in which Landrushers have been treated to date.

Registrars regulating registrars - woohoo - recipe for trouble - for anyone other than those on the inside - just go ask the 36 unsuccessful bidders for the .info registry licence and the thousands of .info Landrushers how they like being treated in the DNS overseen by ICANN.

 


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