ICANN Closes Most Popular Comment Forum

It's the ISSUES that need discussing, not the forum.

It's the concerns over ICANN's governance and lack of openness that matter, not whether some people send nutty messages.

Of course the closure of a single forum is no big scandal.

The real point is ICANN's failure to respond to serious and real concerns and allegations.

The real point is ICANN's failure to enter into dialogue or explanation.

This indicates a mindset that thinks it has the right to do anything and not explain or be called to account.

It also suggests a disdain for the consumer which is at odds with ICANN's mission to be open and transparent as an organisation which serves the public.

People like me have been asking ICANN to respond to a number of serious concerns. Why ever should they not? It's simple courtesy and respect for principles of openness and honesty.

So I call on ICANN to respond to these questions (among others):

1. Why did ICANN agree to a Registry agreement which allowed Sunrise names to be registered without even the basic safeguards to see if Trademark data fields were filled in?

2. If these safeguards were indeed written into the agreement, why didn't ICANN intervene when Afilias was seen to contravene their contract?

3. How does ICANN justify the granting of a generic name Trademark to one company, to the disadvantage of hundreds of other companies around the world who have the same trademark, not to mention the rest of the world who want to use those generic words?

4. Given the fact that it has now taken 7 months and over 11000 key generic names are still locked up and challenged, why didn't ICANN just ask for Trademark certificates to be presented BEFORE Sunrise names were granted?

5. People predicted the Sunrise would be abused and be chaotic. Given the chaos that has followed, shouldn't the governance of ICANN, and the leadership of ICANN be seriously challenged by Congress and by the public? Why did ICANN construct such a flimsy Sunrise procedure?

6. Why were Sunrise registrations which were proven fake (like Afilias Board member Govinda Leopold's hawaii.info, maui.info and govinda.info) not just DELETED so the names could be made available to other consumers at Landrush? Why didn't ICANN intervene?

7. Why was Afilias CEO Hal Lubsen's registrar company allowed to charge $15000 to submit 93 names with zero data in the four trademark fields, in contravention of the contracts? Why was it acceptable for a CEO of the Registry to be associated with making profit out of the abuse of the Registry and Registrar Agreements, and the Sunrise system? Surely ICANN had a duty to consumers to intervene at THIS point, when the ICANN agreements were being ignored and abused to blatantly?

8. Why was it left to obscure members of the public to identify the scale of the Sunrise fraud and list the details (in the face of Afilias denials) and why did ICANN know about all this but refuse to intervene even when over 5000 of the names were identified as being submitted by Afilias's own directors and executives?

9. It is widely recognised that Professor Robert Connor's "Domebase" solution would have offered a fair and workable solution to the .info Sunrise chaos. Why did ICANN allow Afilias to ignore this proposal, when it could have protected consumers and avoided millions of dollars of fraud, if it had interevened and "called in" Afilias's discredited process? Why, in short, did ICANN do nothing?

10. Why has ICANN not stepped in to sanction or cease the accreditation of registrars who are shown to have acted fraudulently? By failing to do so and advertising these fraud registrars, ICANN is aiding and abetting in the deception of consumers and the Internet public. Why do they accredit proven fraudsters?

11. Why didn't ICANN intervene when Konrad Plankenstein admitted he had obtained 4981 Sunrise names using non-existent Trademarks? Why didn't ICANN insist on the deletion of these names? Why didn't ICANN challenge the Afilias Director whose Registrar company received $500,000 for sponsoring these fake names?

12. Why didn't ICANN's Stuart Lynn or Vint Cerf ever enter into dialogue about these concerns, even though invited to do so hundreds of times? Why did they avoid these questions? Why did they leave the public in the lurch? Why was there no openness?

THESE kind of questions are relevant issues.

THESE kind of questions justified the existence of the forum UNTIL they were answered.

Vint Cerf and Stuart Lynn seem to think that they can "get away with it" if they just ignore everybody and remain silent.

But that's not openness and transparency.

I call on Stuart and Vint to respond HERE to the points listed above.

I challenge them.

I invite them (if they are not running scared from the truth) to enter into detailed dialogue on these issues. Or if they claim to be "too busy", then get an identifiable subordinate to respond on their behalf.

I'm sorry if people try to marginalise public forums by referring to the dross. Of course you're going to get jokers who post inane idiocies.

But these issues are serious ones.

The failure of ICANN to respond to them is an indictment of their lack of openness and indicative of a willingness to accommodate a shabby deal for consumers.

The issue is not the forum at all. The issue is ICANN.

Richard Henderson
www.theInternetChallenge.com

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