Domebase - you were right all along... Afilias tried to marginalise the scale of
your findings, just the way they tried to marginalise Robert Connelly when he resigned.
You were a "problem" that had to be managed.Your original "Domebase" solution
would have protected Landrush customers, genuine Trademark applicants, and the integrity
of the .info name.
There was never any proper explanation why your solution was
not implemented. Repeated requests for explanation have been ignored, as have requests
to account for other very serious concerns.
Now your reasonable efforts to get
Afilias to recognise the rights of Landrush applicants are being marginalised as
well.
In short, the fraud suffered by Landrush customers has been completely ignored.
Meanwhile,
at the same time that honest customers have been defrauded of money running into
millions of dollars, Hal Lubsen's DomainBank received $15000 to apply for 100 ineligible
domains. And as well as the Afilias CEO's company benefitting from the scam, a further
$500,000 was paid to the company of an Afilias director to apply for 4981 fake domains
for a single customer.
In this way, the Afilias executive and board were directly
involved in profiting from the abuse of their own system.
ICANN have failed to
intervene or take sanctions against any of this, or even to enter into dialogue about
it; nor have they removed accreditation from registrars who have been proved to have
made fake Sunrise applications for themselves. In effect, ICANN offers endorsement
to registrars who cheat their public and break ICANN rules. This is a dereliction
of duty, and puts "insider" profir before consumer protection.
You were absolutely
right to sound the warning (which, of course, Afilias was already aware of though
they feigned surprise... for goodness sake, their Director Govinda Leopold at this
stage had already made her first round of false claims, although she had still to
submit the second fake phase).
You were absolutely right to sound the warning because
what you said was going on WAS going on. ICANN knew this (I had alerted them myself
in July and August). But the urgent need was to force through the .info roll-out
as a fait-accompli, and you were fobbed off, and they just ignored your sane and
fair solutions.
The second .info round robin is, in effect, Afilias selling the
same names for the THIRD time.
They have never apologised to the people who were
defrauded.
They have never given the defrauded customers any consideration.
It
has all been managed with "spin", with evasion, with refusal to enter into dialogue
on serious forums.
If Domebase had been implemented, then the outcome of Afilias's
challenge would have been to hand over the names to the people who had legitimately
pre-registered them.
All names would have entered the first round-robin, and on
the successful challenge of fraudulent names, those names would simply have been
handed over to the round-robin winners. That was the fair and obvious way to proceed.
Afilias
knows that. ICANN knows that.
You have been polite, rational, patient.
They have
ignored you.
As their own Director, Robert Connelly, said in resignation: this
Sunrise has been truly "an abomination".
And the spin goes on...