I agree with much of what you say and had been meaning to post a simple
question here: will Afilias assure the legitimacy of their process by
disposing of fraudulent Sunrise claims that are NOT being challenged by
a trademark holder?
If they don't, fraudulent claims will still win many generic names and
make a mockery of all of us who abided by the rules.
-mark
On Sun, 2 Sep 2001, Kai Schaetzl wrote:
> > 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
> Get your web at Conactive Internet Services: http://www.conactive.com
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>
>
>
--
mark jeftovic
http://www.easydns.com
http://mark.jeftovic.net
