[ga] [Fwd: [At-Large] Registrar compliance]

["Jeffrey A. Williams" <jwkckid1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

All,

  Seems history is yet again repeating itself, sadly.
Perhaps as Derek and many of us have seen for years,
and at the decidedly disregard of ICANN's Ombudsman,
as well as Sr. Staff and Bod members, that DOC and/or
DOJ will take appropriate steps to clean up ICANN errant
and irresponsible and potentially dangerous behavior.  
????  Although I am myself not entirely hopeful of such 
occurring, stranger things have happened.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [At-Large] Registrar compliance
Date: Sun, 01 Mar 2009 03:10:11 +0200
From: Derek Smythe <derek@xxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: At-Large Worldwide <at-large@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Organization: aa419.org
To: raa-wg-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
at-large@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
CC: President@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, president@xxxxxxxxxxx

Ladies and Gentleman

As you may or may not know, I am actively involved in regularly 
reporting scam domains with fake whois details to registrars, 
concentrating mainly on advance fee fraudsters. Many of the real 
perpetrators are known, these gangs have been busted theoretically 
except for their locality.  Hours and hours are spent verifying facts 
before the first report goes off.

While some registrars have been a pleasure to work with and are willing 
to enforce the RAA (thank you PublicDomainRegistry/DirectI, Enom and the 
others that abide by the RAA), I must admit I am utterly and thoroughly 
disgusted in some of the other registrars.

To make matters worse, ICANN's wonderful WDPRS system does not work! If 
the registrar decides to ignore a report, so does ICANN. I have reported 
numerous domains recently where I really went out of my may to make sure 
the evidence was extremely conclusive. These domains survived the "WDPRS 
process" unchanged, also follow up reports. Yet where I challenged a 
bank to have their lawyers contact one such registrar where the 
registrar ignores my reports, copying the registrar as well, they could 
disable the fake HSBC domain within hours? Hello MelbourneIT? The other 
domains reported in the same batch remain online and actively scamming! 
This is by no means an isolated incident for MelbourneIT.

When making ICANN aware of registrar issues and extreme violations of 
the RAA, also making them aware of ignored WDPRS reports, I have been 
given the cold shoulder. As such, why should RAA compliant registrars 
continue to abide by the RAA if the "world's largest domain name 
registrar" blatantly ignores the RAA? Why should the public waste time 
on a placebo called the WDPRS system? Systems do not enforce compliance, 
the willingness of the people behind the systems do!

As such, in the only avenue left to me, I have published some pertinent 
facts online at a blog, http://www.badwhois.info/wp (I am adding more 
info on the reported domains soon), regarding the holding company of the 
"world's largest domain name registrar" and their attitude towards 
compliance. Yet their website sports an ICANN logo????

How can the ordinary internet user survive the new Internet where 
everybody wants to make rules, but nobody is willing to enforce them? I 
am sickened to the core by this so called system. I saw the Internet 
born, I make a living out of IT, helped build it, I am involved in 
Internet security, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to say I am 
proud of it. "Business on the Internet", "the promise of the Internet" 
etc have all become oxymorons. As an example, take a quick look at how 
many spoofs of one bank there has been that has been found - NatWest 
bank - http://db.aa419.org/fakebankslist.php?psearch=natwest - now try 
Barclays, Citi. Obviously these could be mistaken for UDRP issues, but 
are not. The legal title holders to these marks are not directly 
affected so don not defend against these actively, so the public is left 
to fend for themselves. LEAs will not and impossibly cannot shut down 
each one of these - they simply do not have sufficient resources. 
Anyway, why use the taxpayer's money to sort out a mess that started 
elsewhere, why not stop this at the core? Bogus whois details where a 
registrar refuses to do anything without court orders etc does not help 
when the RAA is blatantly ignored.

Ordinary citizens are under attack, they are being scammed every day on 
the internet, they see the trash in their email boxes, their identities 
are stolen and further scam domains are registered with those self same 
details. Corporates are willing to accept this and self blind or hide 
behind other legalese (also private domain registrations), since it 
allows the money to flow in, yet the victims are the ordinary innocent 
citizens who do not understand how the system works (or does not work). 
The system is now devoid of reality and "decency" - but that is the OPM 
and OPP I refer to in my posting. Definitely no integrity and not 
working for the ordinary internet user. To date nobody can quantify the 
financial losses on the Internet due to scams. Small businesses, and not 
so small, cannot survive once scammers get involved and spoof them. They 
simply do not have the financial means. What happened to 
BuyerGuardian.com? What message is the registrar community and ICANN is 
sending out?

With ICANN Mexico happening, I would appreciate it if some of the 
attendees could find out what chance a normal internet user has of using 
the "system" if I, who I believe am more knowledgeable on domain and RAA 
issues than the average internet user, can not get either the registrar, 
or failing that ICANN, to actually look at reports of serious breaches 
of the RAA. Currently they do not have a snowball's hope ...

Derek Smythe




_______________________________________________
At-Large mailing list
At-Large@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large_atlarge-lists.icann.org

At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org

Regards,

Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 284k members/stakeholders strong!)
"Obedience of the law is the greatest freedom" -
   Abraham Lincoln
"YES WE CAN!"  Barack ( Berry ) Obama

"Credit should go with the performance of duty and not with what is
very often the accident of glory" - Theodore Roosevelt

"If the probability be called P; the injury, L; and the burden, B;
liability depends upon whether B is less than L multiplied by
P: i.e., whether B is less than PL."
United States v. Carroll Towing  (159 F.2d 169 [2d Cir. 1947]
===============================================================
Updated 1/26/04
CSO/DIR. Internet Network Eng. SR. Eng. Network data security IDNS.
div. of Information Network Eng.  INEG. INC.
ABA member in good standing member ID 01257402 E-Mail
jwkckid1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
My Phone: 214-244-4827