William, I see this differently. Neulevel, had a plan in place that originally accomplished two goals.
1. Leveled the playing field among all applicants. 2. Gave them an added source of revenue from the plan. The problem was number 2. I won't bore the list members with a long explanation here. The fact is random applications are good. Bill, I'm not directing my response at you. I'm more or less making general commentary. Don't think this is personal. It's not. Bill and other RSP's, perhaps you were fortunate enough to not be named in this lawsuit so sideline comments can be easy to make. However we were subpoenaed by the courts of California in this case and I won't find any of this amusing. Not to say you do. You mentioned Bill that first come first serve is best. Perhaps so, but an initial launch process must still be amended. I would think everyone would agree that some registrars are inherently evil. NSI would flood the server with duplicate requests like snap names etc... or they would perform a similar act that subverts the process of first come first serve. My understanding is they did this during .info landrush and effectively blocked other registrars from acquiring names. Lets call a spade a spade. Neulevel's hand is being forced. They and we are being sued. Their attitude is lets get this over with. It is not that they have "seen the light" no on had an epiphany at Neulevel because they love customers. I don't see one ounce of sincerity in Jeffrey Neuman when he says: ``Because there's so many creative solutions, those solutions become part of the problem. And the best way, the tested way, would be first-come, first-serve, that's what people are used to,'' Neuman said. Allow me to translate. :) What he is saying is that we had a great system that made us some extra cash at start up, and some dumb ass with a friend for an attorney decided to sue us since we didn't set up shop in a state friendly to random applications. In order to avoid a costly lawsuit that he has cause for, we should just cut our losses and move on. When I say Mr. Neuman is insincere this is not a dig. I mean he is as frustrated with wasted time and money as I am. So Bill and others, I don't disagree that the process is broken still and needs fixing. However a process that insures no one can cheat others means it must protect us from registrars and registrants. Until then, each of us have no choice but to read every registries rules carefully at launch and look for the loophole that enables you to get the names you desire. Because if you don't, NSI and others certainly will. In addition, we did take preregistrations but would only take one application per name. First come first serve. Only one person in our database could request movies.biz for example. We intend to refund money, but unlike others, we have pro-actively minimized the damage. I'll make one more comment. RSP's got royally fucked here. We ran a double gauntlet on the random application process. First TUCOWS took our applications randomly meaning for every 100 applications you took as an RSP, only 10 made it into the round robin. Then you had your miniscule amount of applications in the global registrar round robin to get through. Forgive my candor, but that was bullshit. I don't see TUCOWS as having any choice but in this case it became clear, being and RSP has its downside. I don't know if this pissed anyone else off but I was steaming over this. We took pre-registrations for a year and had a big load of applicants. In my opinion a lot of people wasted money with us and would have done better to go to a full blown accredited registrar. This is just one reason we are not even thinking about .name. Regards, Lars Hindsley SpyProductions -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of William X Walsh Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2001 1:43 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Someone finally gets it The news is at: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011217/wr/tech_domains_biz_dc_2.html Basically Neulevel is admiting its "lottery" plan was not very well thought out and is going to change its policy on those names, and run a new selection mechanism for the names in question in February. (this is not news to us on this list, thanks tou updates from Tucows already, but some may find the story of interest anyway). What I am most pleased to see is Neulevel's Jeffrey Neuman say the following: NeuLevel's Neuman said if he could do it all over again, he would set up a much simpler registration scheme, even if it resulted in a flood of applications ``Because there's so many creative solutions, those solutions become part of the problem. And the best way, the tested way, would be first-come, first-serve, that's what people are used to,'' Neuman said. Finally someone realizes that first come first served IS the most fair manner for domain registrants. End of story. Maybe we can eliminate any "sunrise" or "landrush" registration schemes in future tld roll outs now. -- Best regards, William X Walsh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --
