The
difference between the pre-registration carried out through all registrars of CORE
and the normal registration service offered through IOD's is, that IOD started to
open its .web registry after being authorized to do so through the IANA (maybe it
was misleading, that I called it "pre-register", too - in the case of IOD it should
only read "register", though).You may say, that it was wrong from the IANA to
authorize IOD to register .web domains, but they did. So IOD did not pre-register,
but register from the beginning on - as they were and still are the legitimate registrars
of .web gtld's. They only didn't get the promised access to the A-root-servers.
Of
course IOD's .web registry was and is open to everybody, as e.g. .com was through
network solutions (Internic), too.
If you state, that only 5 people have used IOD's
.web registation services, it might be the problem of all others, who did not use
them. Maybe they all wanted to wait until IOD received access to the A-root-servers
or maybe they where not interested in .web, as there still was enough .com available.
But everybody could have used IOD's.web registry, if she/he had wanted to. Therefore
it is hard to understand why you think this to border on criminal.
Instead, I
think it could cause serious legal problems, if those legal owners of .web domains
would no longer be respected as such in the future.
By the way, I have checked
30 names under .web and found 22 different owners, not only 5, ...