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.