If you're wondering how I know this, it's simple : when I saw a registrar's names
all dated 2040, I decided to try it out to see if it was a glitch, and it was. Dumb
admittedly, but it's what I did. I immediately requested the deletion of what I had
done, but Afilias refused - so I was stuck with it. I sent over 30 e-mails out on
12th August (3 days later) informing Afilias and ICANN and NY Times etc what I had
done and requesting deletion (and the deletion of all other ineligible names).This
e-mail was sent to Vint Cerf, Afilias, Ken Stubbs, Karl Auerbach, Stuart Lynn, the
rest of the ICANN board individually, The Register, Internet.com, ZDnet, The Washington
Post (to 4 separate reporters), and The New York Times (to 10 separate reporters).
"The
registrar has submitted many names with the Trademark in each case dated 2040-01-02
and no trademark number given: Graham Wilkinson has used them in this method to apply
for all of the following: space.info, election.info, restaurant.info (and I
have tried it myself this weekend with a sample name!) My urgent request is that
Afilias immediately deletes these improperly dated names. I feel that Afilias have
a moral duty to resolve this and delete these phoney applications BEFORE Landrush
begins."
From then on Afilias steadfastly refused the deletion option, and when
I requested deletion on 4th January (which Afilias said they would allow after the
challenge period) Tucows received a refusal to delete from Afilias: Paul Karkas at
Tucows sent me this e-mail:
"I just received the reply from the .info registry,
included below.
Please forgive me if the continuity is out of sorts, I cut and
pasted the most pertinent parts for your edification.
Let me know if you need further
explanation.
Paul Karkas
Compliance Officer OpenSRS
Tucows Inc.
> although
this registrant seems to be well-meaning and wants a deletion of
> his names,
reopening the database for him will mandate Afilias reopening
the
> database
for the entire population of sunrise registrants -
>
> we can place the
names mentioned below on our WIPO challenge list, and if
> your registrant
does not contest it, the names will be returned to the
pool
> of names to
be distributed
So THAT'S how I know that WIPO are sending out the challenges.
What
slightly irks me (apart from my own dumbness at the beginning) is that Afilias were
prepared to delete Govinda Leopold's hawaii.info and maui.info and govinda.info but
they were not prepared to delete the name of someone who had been requesting deletion
since the day of registration.
In this way, Afilias avoided having to challenge
one of their own Directors.
I would like to stress that all along I have been opposed
to the retention of false.info names and immediately requested the deletion of my
name. In those early days I don't think any of us really knew how this was all going
to develop, and it seemed unthinkable to me that Afilias would lock in names that
were ineligible, once a deletion was requested. I still take the view that all names
should have been made available at Landrush, and that all facially ineligible ones
should have been deleted before Landrush began.