At 8/7/01 2:20 AM, Taco Scargo wrote:
>If Afilias is not going to 'police' this kind of fraudulent approach, well,
>why not open up the registry right from the start. I expect that at least
>80% of the names registered in the Sunrise period is 'fraudulent' or at
>least not valid.
Agreed. In a random sample, most of the ones I looked up indicated some
kind of monkey business.
For example, take a look at "hosting.info". The trademark is listed as
"registrar reserved" -- it looks like eNom grabbed it for themselves
without having a trademark on it.
Or "vacation.info". The trademark date is listed as "2001-07-30" (a
simple check would have rejected that as too late) and the trademark
number is listed as "none"(!).
Or "holiday.info" and "mp3.info": both grabbed by a company that's
clearly a domain speculator. I'm guessing "New-Top-Domain ltd." probably
doesn't actually have a trademark on both those words.
This is annoying. Didn't the Afilias people realize this was going to
happen? The idea that the system was set up with no verification, no
penalty for lying, and an actual disincentive for anyone to challenge
others who untruthfully claimed trademark rights on generic words, is
mind-boggling.
The policy should have been that anyone who files a challenge and wins
gets the domain. THAT would have been a disincentive to lying, because
people would file challenges. But why should I spend $75 to free
"vacation.info" so that someone else (who doesn't have a trademark on it,
either) can get it?
Grrrr.
--
Robert L Mathews, Tiger Technologies
