| | At Large Membership and Civil Society Participation in ICANN |
|
| |
|
|
|
 Registrar Reserved names in the .info Sunrise process
posted by jon on Wednesday July 16 2003, @10:45AM
JeffD writes "In its agreements with its Registrars, Afilias permitted registrars (that were accredited at least 10 days prior to the start of the .info Landrush Period) to reserve up to 10 .info names for their own use. The wording of the contract provision is a little ambiguous (see http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/info/registry -agmt-appf-11may01.htm v.5) but suggests that this right was exercisable during the 10 days prior to the start of the Landrush Period.
There are additional restrictions on names that registrars were able to reserve - thay could not have been previously registered (as opposed to applied for) and they had to be a trade name, trademark or service mark of the registrar and be identical to a name registered by the registrar in the .com or .net TLD. There is also no exception in the Afilias’ Sunrise Policy for names to be registered by Registrars during the Sunrise Period unless they also comply with the trademark requirements that applied to everyone.
However, 322 .info names have been registered by registrars during the Sunrise Period and are regarded as "Sunrise Names" as defined int he Sunrise Policy. “Registrar reserved’ has been inserted into the 4 required ‘Trademark’ fields as ‘justification’ for the Sunrise registration. Some registrars took a responsible approach to this opportunity and simply registered their own trading name – such as Bhavin Turakhia of directi who registered just one name – directi.info. I don’t think that anyone would have any problem with this - even if Bhavin did not hold a trademark on the name.
However, others appear not to have been so responsible."
|
|
 |
|
Many applied for - and were awarded - .info names very early in the Sunrise process and before anyone else had a chance of registering them. The generic names registered generaly appear not to be trade names of their core registrar business - unless you regard a generic name as a trade name when it is used to lure unsuspecting surfers to your domain business rather then to the generic information that they were seeking...
Some examples:
Barry Fellman - Signature Domains
addiction
automobile
bankruptcy
compare
cult
foot
nudes
script
sick
stuff
Bruce Kaiser - Namezero
yourbra
Bruce Winn - CSCInfo
corporate
earn
incorporate
incspot
llc
recordscenter
Govinda Leopold - 1stdomain
ccbuch
cchawaii
german
hochzeit (German for wedding)
lottoking
mauiwedding
Hal Lubsen - DomainBank
fortknox
preregistration
whoisdata
Juan Carlos Sanchez - Catalog.com
crull
Samuela Fleitman - Catalog.com
dallas
ethos
oklahoma
plano
Keith Lubsen - DomainPro
angels
YesNIC
highest
lowest
Hal Lubsen - who registered FortKnox.info - is also CEO of Afilias. As several entities own trademarks in the Fort Knox name, it would be interesting to know if any Sunrise applications were denied so that Mr Lubsen could register 'his' name. There is no record of a trademark application by Mr Lubsen at the USPTO.
Disappointingly, with one exception, none of the registrations listed above are linked to an active web site (the exception is crull.info which is used as the personal web site of Bob Crull, who described himself as the founder of catalog.com - hardly a use in connection with the registrar business of catalog.com).
By allowing these names to be preferentially registered by its own registrars, Afilias has not only ensured that they are not available to the general public, they have also ensured that they provide no useful content for the benefit of the general public. I am sure that there are lots of people out there who could make very good use of dallas.info, oklahoma.info, german.info and the rest of the hijacked names.
Jeff Davies
[I've been asked to note that Jeff Davies sued ICANN and Afilias last year, urging that Afilias's sunrise policy violated U.S. law; the suit was dismissed on grounds unrelated to the merits. Seems to me, though, that whether you find his discussion here convincing should turn on what he says, not on whom he's sued. -- jon]
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
[ Don't have an account yet? Please create one. It's not required, but as a registered user you can customize the site, post comments with your name, and accumulate reputation points ("karma") that will make your comments more visible. ]
|
|
| | |
|
|
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
|
|
Registrar Reserved names in the .info Sunrise process
|
Log in/Create an Account
| Top
| 14 comments
|
Search Discussion
|
|
|
|
The Fine Print:
The following comments are owned by whoever posted them.
We are not responsible for them in any way.
|
|
|
Although it is obvious that registrars abused the so-called Sunrise policy for registrations, I fail to see the necessity of publishing websites for any domain name if a registrant chooses not to do so. Domain names are used for many things besides websites and the fact that the public is ignorant of those uses is no excuse for the expectation of websites or content. Domain names are often used for provision of sublevel domains for users, email only, hostname conventions, and other non-website uses. A typical hostname use might be [dns.acorp.info], [ns.acorp.info], [sales.acorp.info], [archives.acorp.info], [somedept.acorp.info] [intranet.acorp.info]... The examples could also represent third level domains offered to acorp's users or a primary domain for just email accounts [myname.emailcorp.info], [yourname.emailcorp.info], [mail-listname.emailcorp.info]...
Nothing requires having a website in order to use a domain.
|
|
|
|
[ Reply to This | Parent
]
|
| |
|
|
A possible explanation for Keith Lubsen's registration of angels.info is provided by a report at http://abcnews.go.com/sections/living/DailyNews/mo rphine0601.html which, for some reason, reports the support of Mr Lubsen for a Dr Robert Weitzel who was accused of the murder of 5 elderly patients under his care. The doctor was convicted and jailed but later released and acquitted on retrial.
Killer or angel of mercy was the question asked by the report - and perhaps one that Mr Lubsen wished to address using his acquisition of angels.info. Clearly a wholly legitimate use of a registrar's ability to reserve domain names for their own use prior to them being available to the general public!
Jeff Davies
j@jduk.com
|
|
|
|
[ Reply to This | Parent
]
|
|
|
|
Signature Domains should lose its ICANN accreditation (if it has it) because of this, and Hal Lubsen should be fired, hung out to dry, and hit with a wet noodle by each of the companies he denied their rights to register "FortKnox.info." Regardless if Jeff Davies has a beef with ICANN, I do thank him for bringing this registrar (and registry) corruption to the attention of Internet users. It would be interesting to see what Afilias spokeswoman Heather Carle [mailto] has to say about Mr. Lubsen's "sunrise" registrations. :)
Best,
Doug
Doug Mehus
http://dmehus.posterous.com/ [posterous.com]
|
|
|
|
[ Reply to This | Parent
]
|
|
|
|
Hmmm.... Very interesting comment! And one that will probably be ignored by most as a typo. But there was a meeting at Reston, Virginia of ICANN's Registrar's constituency on February 16, 2002. All online minutes of the meeting have since mysteriously disappeared but I have located a cached summary which, under item 7, states:
"Mohan, Afilias: dot info sunrise period issues. Many registrars and registrants did not heed clear rules. A presentation ensued."
I wonder is any reader has any further information of what Mr Mohan - Afilias head of operations - had to say and what this presentation included???
Jeff Davies
j@jduk.com
|
|
|
|
[ Reply to This | Parent
]
|
| | | 6 replies beneath your current threshold. |
Privacy Policy: We will not knowingly give out your personal data -- other than identifying your postings in the way you direct by setting your configuration options -- without a court order. All logos and trademarks in this site are property of their
respective owner. The comments are property of their posters, all the rest © 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 by ICANNWatch.Org. This web site was made with Slashcode, a web portal system written in perl. Slashcode is Free Software released under the GNU/GPL license.
You can syndicate our headlines in .rdf, .rss, or .xml. Domain registration services donated by DomainRegistry.com
|
