ICANNWatch | Notes From All Over

Anonymous speculates about whether VeriSign might be planning to by-pass the IETF.
Rossa points to an article about the rising value of domain names.
Frank Weyer suggests that .md's new 'sunrise' policy is just another form of money grubbing.

Details below.

Anonymous writes "A recent mailing list post by Phil Hallam-Baker, the Principal Scientist of Verisign, should make us think:

"Doing something to the Internet that would set a precedent for acting without IESG or IANA approval is not a disaster in my view, quite the contrary.
I want the use of the SRV style _ep or _spf record tagging to set a precedent for extending the DNS outside the control of the IESG."

For the uninitiated, the IESG is the comitee that heads the IETF. The IETF sets majority of Internet standards."

Rossa writes "The dot-com gold rush may be over, but territorial claims can still be valuable, if the prices of dot-com domain names are any indication. (International Herald Tribune, Tuesday 2 March 2004)"

Frank Weyer writes "According to a press release dated February 25, 2004, http://www.max.md/sunrise/news.php, a new company called MaxMD has announced a two-month "sunrise" period during which TM holders can register .md domain names for $200, and the registration period must be for at least 3 years.

This is another example of a company seeking to cash in on a ccTLD, not by providing a service that prospective customers actually want, but by forcing TM holders to cough up registration fees to protect their TM rights in yet another TLD. MaxMD's announcement of the "sunrise" period for the .md ccTLD is especially disingenuous considering the domain has been open to general registrations since 1998. This is a similar tactic recently used by GNR (by opening .name to second level registrations) and RegistryPro.

In its press release, MaxMD states that it acquired the rights to register .md domain names in 90 countries "from a Moldovan company who acquired those rights from a Moldovan state enterprise." This statement seems to contradict statements made by MoldData (the Moldovan state enterprise who is the ICANN recognized manager of the .md ccTLD) to the Bankruptcy Court in Atlanta, where it argued that the 1998 contract that granted similar rights to Domain Name Trust, Inc. was illegal under recently enacted Moldovan Law that made the granting of such rights illegal (MoldData used that argument to convince the Bankruptcy Court to sell those rights back to MoldData for a meager $175,000, even though other parties were willing to pay more to the Bankruptcy Estate).

There were a lot of problems with the prior management of .md registrations by Domain Name Trust, Inc., and later by dotMD, LLC. But at least during the time dotMD, LLC was working under Chapter 11 bankruptcy, an attempt was made to provide proper service to registrants, to reduce the registration price and increase value. Now its back to money grubbing as usual. That is a shame.

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,md re-uses old hype
by fnord (reversethis-{moc.oohay} {ta} {k2yorg}) on Tuesday March 02 2004, @07:00AM (#13051)
User #2810 Info

New press release here [businesswire.com]

Old press release here [prnewswire.com]

Max.md [www.max.md] claims (in what must be one of the lamest attempts at a website) There's a new address in healthcare. Except it's been marketed that way for years.

Maxmd will charge $200 during sunrise, but the registrar of IANA record [iana.org] is register.md [register.md] where prices start at $59.

Maxmd is going to have a sunrise period but this [www.nic.md] states:

CHAPTER 3
Principles and modality of registration
3.1 The registration is made in accordance with the principle “ the first to come, is the first to be served”.

Of course confusion is nothing new to .md [iana.org]. This [doc.gov] states:

37. The U.S. company DotMD is no longer managing the MD top level domain after Moldova’s Republican Center of Information terminated June 27 the DotMD license agreement over the U.S. company’s failure to live up to its commitments. The deal with DotMD was disputed by the Moldovan Parliament and some companies, which saw the domain as a national symbol. In June, a law came into effect declaring the MD domain state property and banning its sale or rent.

I guess that law's been repealed. The total number of registrants as of 2002 was 4200 [centr.org], that was after some of the 'best' names were dropped [findarticles.com], no doubt partly because some registrants were surprised to find that renewal fees for 'good' names ran into the thousands of dollars, and that was well after dotmd declared bankruptcy [emailxtreme.com]. Dotmd was also behind the dotlaw TLD application [icann.org] back in 2000, when they stated:

By the end of 2001, dotMD expects to have over 55,000 registered .md domain names, generating revenue of close to $35 million per year

I guess that didn't happen either. Frank Weyer alleged corruption [dotmd.com] [.pdf] on the part of Moldova. Not to worry though, he has a license [prweb.com] to print money. You couldn't make this stuff up. -g

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