ICANN Closes Most Popular Comment Forum

Illustration of Public Concerns:

Afilias has close links with past and present ICANN Board.

Afilias granted .info Registry.

ICANN agrees to flimsy Trademark Protection Scheme which allows for names to be reserved at Sunrise without any checking or safeguards.

ICANN's accredited Registrars (some of them) use this loophole to grab names by inserting phoney trademark details (which they know don't have to be checked).

Even Directors on Afilias's Board are at it.

The one safeguard ICANN does write into the contract is that there should be four data fields giving Trademark name, number, date, and country of origin.

The Registrar Company DomainBank is run by Afilias CEO Hal Lubsen.

It is reasonable to suppose that this company would behave in an exemplary manner to protect both its own good name and that of Afilias.

An example of "conflict of interest": DomainBank charge a guy called William Lorenz $15000 to sponsor 93 of his names, even though he's typed "NONE" in Trademark Name, "NONE" in Trademark Number, "NONE" in Trademark Date, and "NONE" in Trademark Country.

DomainBank abuse the Afilias system, breaking the contractual requirements, even though Hal Lubsen has executive roles in both organisations.

William Lorenz then has a change of heart and requests the 93 names be deleted so that Landrush customers are not defrauded.

He asks DomainBank and Afilias 23 times to delete the ineligible names.

His request is declined. The Landrush pre-registrants of the same names will lose their money. William Lorenz has paid $15000 for a product which DomainBank knew he could not obtain because the applications were ineligible. But DomainBank keeps the profit.

In short, if the company of the Afilias CEO is prepared to flout the rules and run off with the money - taking money for a product that they know is not eligible - then where is the ICANN or Afilias governance in all this?

Where is the protection of the consumer?

This process was repeated in the case of 4981 names registered (at a charge of $500,000) by Speednames, also represented on the Afilias Board.

The companies of Afilias Board members and executives were profiting, through the abuse of their own Sunrise systems.

In fact, though they bemoaned the frauds of the Sunrise cheats, OVER HALF of the fake names were submitted by the companies of Afilias officials, who were happy to take money for ineligible names, and would not delete them even when requested to do so.

So... ICANN creates a flimsy Sunrise system which is open to abuse.

Its registry Afilias is associated with the process of fraud and corruption.

And Stuart Lynn, Vint Cerf and Hal Lubsen are then asked time after to time to offer some kind of explanation.

Response: total silence.

Openness? NONE.

I call on members of Congress to look closely at this episode, as indicative of a culture which turns a blind eye on corruption, is totally lacking in openness and transparency, and which pays no regard to the consumer.

As I said at the beginning of this post, this is just ONE illustration of public concerns.

All these details above are corroborated with documentary evidence.

The New TLDs Agreements Forum was right to draw attention to this and also to many other unacceptable issues.

(EG: Afilias Directors using fake Trademarks at Sunrise. EG: WIPO successfully challenging many Sunrise claims made by ICANN accredited Registrars themselves, and yet ICANN continues to accredit them and advertise them. No sanctions. No protection for the consumer.)

The refusal of ICANN to even engage in dialogue on issues like this, and accept accountability, is wholly inacceptable in a public body invested with the trust of the worldwide internet community.

As John Dingell (Michigan) said: "ICANN seems to be accountable to nobody but God Almighty."

It's wholly unacceptable.

Stuart Lynn proposes Reforms for ICANN. The first reform that should take place is the removal of the ICANN board and its replacement with people like Karl Auerbach who are prepared to insist on total openness, total honesty, and total accountability.

Richard Henderson
www.theInternetChallenge.com

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