[ga] Re: gTLD Evaluation

In this supplementary e-mail I would like to look at the pre-registrations I made through DomainBank. As you will know, Hal Lubsen has for many years been one of the lead figures in DomainBank, and DomainBank was a central registrar in the Afilias cartel. Indeed, in their advertising during the build up to the .info launch, Afilias urged customers to use them because of their strong involvement in Afilias.

And yet, having sold me a pre-registration for a domain name, they subsequently agreed to submit the same name with ineligible data in the Sunrise phase for William Lorenz of Strategic Domains (along with over 90 other domain names). These Sunrise names notoriously had "NONE" in the mandatory trademark datafields and, indeed, Lorenz himself asked over 20 times in e-mails for these Sunrise applications to be cancelled, but he was refused. Domainbank charged Lorenz $15000 for these Sunrise names, which (a) DomainBank sponsored in clear breach of the Registry-Registrar rules (b) Afilias registered, even though they were directly told they were ineligible, and could see that they were.

As Hal Lubsen was also CEO of Afilias at the same time, you will understand that I (and customers like myself for any of the 90+ names involved, applying through scores of registrars) would feel understandably aggrieved at the corruption of the process. Although DomainBank (after widespread criticism) refunded the pre-registration money, many other registrars did not, and therefore people sustained a loss as a result of DomainBank's conscious breach of the rules and Afilias's failure to uphold its process.

I complained to both Afilias and ICANN about this and did not even get the courtesy of an acknowledgement to my mail. The issue was only one of many issues involved with the chaotic .info launch, but it was of particular interest as a demonstration of the way the cartel members themselves, and the Afilias CEO in particular, appeared to be associated with the corruption of their own processes.

Further analysing the 30 domain names I pre-registered through DomainBank, I find that only 6 out of the 30 names were actually available in Landrush as 24 had been 'reserved' in Sunrise, 16 of them with what turned out to be 'faked' or non-existant Trademark details - these 16 were challenged and re-sold in the Landrush 2 the next year.

If my statistics are typical, it would suggest that around half the pre-registrations that people made were in fact invalidated by the collapse of the Sunrise process and the trademark fakes (or, the abuse of the process by registrars like DomainBank).

One of the 30 names I pre-registered with DomainBank was whisky.info : I had a legitimate interest in this domain because I am the published author on a book about whisky. I find it reprehensible that I lost the chance to acquire this domain name because Afilias registered it (in breach of its own rules and conditions) with the ineligible Trademark date 2040 - 01 - 02 (the rules stated clearly that only TMs prior to Oct 2000 would be accepted); Trademark Name: "UNKNOWN"; Trademark Number "0" ... in other words, there was no supporting Trademark data.

John Hubbard assessments.info John Hubbard b2b.info John Hubbard blind.info John Hubbard blindness.info John Hubbard braille.info John Hubbard bromley.info John Hubbard cheese.info John Hubbard cruises.info John Hubbard disabled.info John Hubbard electricity.info John Hubbard ergonomic.info John Hubbard gatwick.info John Hubbard genealogy.info John Hubbard gin.info John Hubbard her.info John Hubbard his.info John Hubbard nba.info John Hubbard otford.info John Hubbard port.info John Hubbard roadrunner.info John Hubbard sailing.info John Hubbard sevenoaks.info John Hubbard spacetravel.info John Hubbard stansted.info John Hubbard tabletennis.info John Hubbard taxi.info John Hubbard tonbridge.info John Hubbard tunbridgewells.info John Hubbard uktravel.info John Hubbard visuallyimpaired.info)

Why has Afilias allowed a Sunrise name with zero trademark rights and visibly ineligible data to go unchallenged and not even altered for over 31 months? If ICANN has a responsibility for giving the public access to the DNS, then why are members of the public like myself deprived use of a valid domain name, while a fake registration which was originally and visibly against the rules is still going unchallenged for approaching 3 years?

Another domain name I pre-registered with DomainBank was iceland.info : take a look at the current unaltered Trademark data for this domain. Along with over 100 other Sunrise applications by the same registrar, the trademark number is filed as "eg 12345" which cannot be correct. Why, 31 months later, is this visibly insufficiewnt data still part of the WHOIS?

The Lorenz case in particular concerns me, particularly in the context of other Afilias directors who broke the rules and in some cases applied for Sunrise names for themselves using fake Trademark numbers. I found it ironical in the Lorenz case that when it was made clear to Lorenz that his applications were ineligible and would harm honest Landrush applicants, he urgently and repeatedly pressed for the 90+ sunrise names to be cancelled in time for Landrush applicants to benefit. I have over 20 e-mails he sent with these requests. But he was ignored (although the ICANN-Registry Agreement gives Afilias specific authority to delete names in these circumstances). So Afilias's part of the profits were safeguarded, and DomainBank's part of the profits were safeguarded. Ironically, because of a credit card problem, about half of Lorenz's payment of $15000 could not be processed at the time, and afterwards Afilias aggressively pursued Lorenz through legal representatives for payment for the remainder... payment for a product which both DomainBank and Afilias knew was ineligible, knew was against the rules, and refused to cancel. DomainBank had charged $15000 for a product which they could not (under the terms of their own rules) provide.

If I am correct in believing that around half the pre-registrations through around 60 registrars were actually invalidated by the failure and corruption of the Sunrise process, then this suggests that consumers lost hundreds of thousands of dollars of money, which they had invested in good faith in a process which they were encouraged to participate in by the registrars, to have a fair chance of acquiring a domain name in the Landrush. These customers did not expect to have a guarantee to get all their applications - that much was understood - but it was reasonable that they should expect the process itself to be upheld by the Registry, by the Registrars, and by ICANN.

And when fair and reasonable concerns and questions were addressed to ICANN (and specifically to the executive with responsibility for liaising in these matters, Dan Halloran), the repeated mails (also published publically as time went on) were studiously ignored. Almost two years later, there has not even been the courtesy of an acknowledgement to repeated submissions of these concerns.