> I am under the impression that if somebody other than Afilias (i.e. you)
> challenge it and win, you get it.
no, only if you have a trademark. Otherwise it goes back to the pool. That deeply
discourages challenging fraudulent generic registrations.
>
> Then after all the third party challenges are in, Afilias is supposed
> to go through the ones that are left (have not been challenged) and
> themselves challenge the fraudulent ones and those go back into the
> free pool.
>
I don't believe this, I think their open letter is just a balloon to calm the public
uproar. I claim that at least 50% of the Sunrise registrations are fraudulous and at
least half of these are so evidently not matching the minimum criteria given by
Afilias
that you could just run a relatively small Perl regex matching script on them to sort
them out. Most of the other half could be easily identified by hiring a K11 school
class for some weeks and having them shift thru all entries.
Actually there is NO good reason for "challenging" entries which are not matching the
minimum criteria. A WIPO challenge makes only sense when there is a *doubt* that a
registration can be claimed only for one party. F.i. if a certain name is held as a
trademark in different countries or for different product areas. In this case you need
a third instance deciding about who gets it, be it WIPO or a court. However, if a
registration does NOT meet the minimum criteria there is NO need for such a process at
all. You just discard it. That would be the only correct way for Afilias handling
this.
And they could have easily done this before going into Landrush. Their lack of doing
so
shows that they are not interested at all in enforcing their own publically spread
policy about what you need to enter in the Sunrise period. So, everyone playing by the
rules has been effectively betrayed by Afilias.
If someone in the States is going to sue them about this we sure would be willing to
add some money to their "war chest". If there are enough resellers doing so it might
be
feasible for one party to sue them without having a great expense of their own.
I also ask Tucows to step in here. Tucows is a share holder of Afilias and Tucows is
our direct partner if it comes to dealing with Afilias. Some days ago I went thru the
pre-reg list in the RWI and canceled more than 50% of our orders because they had
fraudulently been taken during Sunrise. There is no doubt about at least 95% of these
cancellations that the registration didn't meet the Afilias minimum criteria. So, we
(and Tucows) lost 50% of potential business for info pre-reg names. I'm certain that
it
is more or less the same with other RSP's. We and Tucows are losing money because of
this in great deal. I don't think that Tucows can just step aside and point at
Afilias.
This matter does not only cause the loss of money for all of us, it also shakes the
complete credibility of info domains and the registration process, in general it casts
a shadow of doubt on all participating registrars and resellers.
Some people pointed out in the past that Afilias made clear to some extent that they
would not police the Sunrise period. I don't know about this, but it simply doesn't
matter. If you put up such a page:
http://www.afilias.info/press-room/releases/release-20010725-1.html
which says:
> Sunrise Period Requirements & Restrictions
>
> Those wishing to reserve their marks in the .INFO domain during the Sunrise Period
> must own a current trademark or service mark having national effect prior to October
> 2, 2000. Requests for domain names of corresponding trademarks or service marks must
> be for only the ASCII characters identical to the textual or word elements of the
> mark only; however, hyphens may be used between spaces within a registered mark.
>
you have to enforce these rules or you betray anyone reading the page and playing by
the rules. If you don't there's no excuse. If you put up rules you have to stand by
these rules or you have to refrain from giving any rules.
I also read at www.domebase.com that there was at least one registrar actively
encouraging fraudulent registrations. They should have been thrown out of the
consortium immediately. Failure to do so shows again that Afilias is not playing by
their own rules. (The page at www.domebase.com is an interesting read, although poorly
and confusingly edited and layouted, I encourage everyone to read it if he didn't
already do so.)
So, what is Tucows planning to save our business here?
(I'm not a native English speaker, so please bear with me if I used inappropriate or
harsh wording.)
Kai
--
Kai Sch�tzl, Berlin, Germany
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