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Username: antipodes
Date/Time: Mon, December 17, 2001 at 12:52 AM GMT
Browser: Netscape Communicator V4.74 using Windows 98
Subject: Yes, when I read that news which contained the comment that

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it would provide increased competition, I shook my head and wondered what Australia had done to deserve an extension administered by the registry which orchestrated the Internet's worst instance of cyber fraud during its .info launch and in all likelihood will continue to ignore all but its corporate customers when 10,000 challenged (does any one believe that all fraudulently registered Sunrise names will be challenged!)names are effectively sold for a third time at Landrush (ha ha) 2.

Who would like to guess the way in which Afilias will contrive the resale of the challenged names in order to take most money out of the pockets/credit card accounts of the Internet community?

You can bet it will either be a low key affair where insiders with the best technology will grab the best of the recycled names, or, amid much fanfare, Afilias and its complicit registrars and shop fronts will tout the opportunity to register names, thought so good that some risked the severe penalties for TM fraud to register them in the .info Sunrise, as though it was only through Afilias's diligence that the opportunity of a lifetime is being made possible.

Posters will know - although not many of the people who will be attracted to the likely hoopla that will preceed the resale of the Sunrise registration frauds - that the availability of 10,000 .info names is due to Afilias contrivance to make more money, or lack of diligence on Afilias's part.

It beggars belief that the concern expressed by Afilias  Ltd. in its .info Registry bid document about the obvious risks of TM and cyber fraud and its claim that it would be proactive in its security measures to protect IP rights, could result in ICANN approval of an "after the event" policy on TM and cyber fraud in the ICANN/Afilias Registry Agreement, unless ICANN and Afilias wanted to find out how many applicants would try to cheat, and how much additional revenue could be made from an obviously inadequate launch policy.

It seems to me that to increase the incidence of cyber fraud, the entrepreneurial SpyProductions (and we have been advised UKReg) notified any one whom had had contact with it that the down side risks of committing TM fraud to secure a .info Sunrise registration were minimal.  SpyProductions told us all how hard it would be to win a valuable name in the Landrush - so why not cheat - the system was designed for cheats - as Afilias's only IP rights protection was an "after the event" policy.

Unfortunately, for every cheat prepared to pay five years registration for a .info Sunrise registration, heaven knows how many people with preregistrations for the same name had the money they had paid for their chance to win the name wiped away.

It's hard to guess the size of the windfall the registrars enjoyed when the cheats took 10,000 of the 50,000 Sunrise registrations.

In my case, preregistering education generics, I had bought about ten preregistrations for each of the top ten names I wanted by the time of the SpyProductions announcement, after which I stopped buying preregistrations.  As all of my top ten names were taken with fraudulent TM applicants - I had the cost of 100 preregistrations go up in smoke.

Multiply this amount of money by the number of Landrush applicants who wanted these same names, who may have spent as much if not more than me.

My guess is that for just the top ten names on my list, there was probably 50 other applicants who had preregistered them in the months before Sunrise to the level that I had.

To try to gauge the size of the windfall to the Afilias Ltd. registrars, do the sums for just one group of generics in what must be a list of more than 100 - (100 preregistrations X 50 applicants = 5,000 preregistration fee payments).

Do the sums for say 100 groups of generics - (5,000 X 100 = 500,000 preregistration fee payments).

With the ICANN approved Afilias "after the event" IP protection policy, the registry Afilias and its registrars derived 10,000 registrations X 5 years fees = 50,000 registration years, compared to 10,000 X 2 = 20,000 registration years, a difference of 30,000 registration years, while the registrars absorbed I estimate 500,000 preregistration fees for the same names, and will still have the 10,000 names registered by Afilias for the Sunrise cheats available for resale in the comming months.

In my opinion, given Afilias's track record with the .info rollout, Afilias should be excluded from consideration for additional Internet responsibilities, until those in the company responsible for the .info Sunrise fiasco are replaced with others prepared to be responsible, accountable and transparent.

Why, when given what we know of Afilias's performance as the administrator of the .info Registry, would the Internet's regulatory authority ICANN appoint Afilias to administer the Australian extension.

If Afilias didn't win the job on merit, how did it get the job?

     
     

 


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