Let assume the ".shop"
gTLD is to be open.
Registrations start on Dec 26, 2000 at 09:00 GMT.
Nice
fun for Xmas holidays.
Half the world complained because this is not business
hours in their place. But that has been accepted.All the TV of the world have
it online, million of people on the web are watching and ready to try their own $10
discounted ".shop".
"whois" has been disconnected.
This is Y2K+1 BigBingo!
From
00:08:45 10782 porfessional cybersquatter et 865.991 people with the "SuperShopper"
program start sending mails to 121 Registrars to register "icecream.shop" and many
other. The worldwide spermatozoid race, for a $25.000 to $1.000.000 return.
The
internet crahes in different places, live on TV.
France complains offically because
obviously British overloaded access was favored over the French overlaoded lines,
etc..
Never mind, one will win. The press will give the list of the winners. From
all over the world people will call saying "I got one, who wants it?". If 80% of
the bingo winners are US citizen? big internatinoal up-roar, the new president must
resign. If only 30 % of the winner are US companies : the dollar is shaken and the
NASDAQ falls down with all the US e-commerce having to pay cybersquatters from all
over the world.
How the ICANN, the 121 registrars, the US Gov., etc... will demonstrate
the winner has sent his mail at 00:00:00 and not before (otherwise he cheated). That
the mail arrived at the registrars at the same time less 1/1000 of second as the
others mails sent 1/1000 of second later to other registrars, that all the registrars
took the same amount of time to process the requests, etc... (I do not even consider
the responsibity of Cisco into this, ... and think about all the hackers and their
technical and legal impact!)
If there is not a description from all the registrars
about a contractual processing speed and procedure so people may chose, if there
is not an insurance to pay back deceived registrants in case of a service disruption
of the registrars and ISP machines (under an annormous load), if the mecanism of
all the registrars machines is not explained in detail, if etc... if etc... losers
will sue ISP, line providers, registrars, ICANN and US Gov. for having favored the
winners. Let hopes there is not a real cheating: it would be an international nightmare.
One
having won, there will be 10871 cybersquetters having lost, i.e. if 2365 good names
were tried in the first hours, sent to an average of 2.7 registrars, it would make
69.416.770 potential cases to make money with. If only one case on 43218 (why not)
goes to courts, this means 1606 decisions plus probably 800 appeals and 100 cases
in Supreme Courts, squattered over as many countries as there are foreign registrars.
The talk of the world for years. Tobacco industry and MicroSoft will be a vey short
story when compared. Obiously some will win.
Then Carter's daughter, CEO of CarterCom,
will win in the Supreme Court showing it was an illegal lottery, will make each owner
paid back $15, ".shop" closed, and TLDs deregulated. History will retain this as
the end of the "world economy" and the beinging of the "post TLD development era".
Is that not a nice script for the "Yokohama Trap" picture?