Re: [ga] Verisign under penalty of perjury: without WLS, registrars "threaten the stability of the Internet"

["Richard Henderson" <richardhenderson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

George Kirikos's questions deserve detailed dialogue, and specific responses
from ICANN.

Why does ICANN evade so many fair and sincere questions?

Why is there no mechanism for responses to analyses like George's?

If ICANN is open and transparent and has nothing to hide, why doesn't it
engage in open dialogue?

Can we have a response to George Kirikos's main points please?

...

...

then again...

I am hardly optimistic that there is any sincere intent on the part of ICANN
to engage in dialogue.

I have archived on this GA list a succession of mails to Dan Halloran and
Paul Twomey.

450 days ago I asked Dan to respond to serious questions about the NewTLDs
and registrar abuse of the process and the failure to implement various
ICANN agreements and the continued accreditation of registrars who had
committed fraud.

Because I have never even had an acknowledgement to repeated mails to Dan H,
I asked Paul Twomey 80 days ago if he could solicit a response from Dan, or
himself, or someone on his staff. And I've never even had a response from
him either.

ICANN seems to avoid openness and dialogue. They seem to hope the awkward
issues will just be dropped if they ignore them long enough.

Many of my original questions are still valid. But some are being overtaken
by time. For example:

I questioned Dan Halloran about the exploitation of their privilege by
certain registrars, submitting very short lists on their own behalf in the
Round-Robin processes, and thereby 'queue-jumping' the market and acquiring
some of the best names for themselves. I asked Dan Halloran whether
intervention was possible to prevent a repeat of this insider-benefit which
had just occurred in the .biz2B, before the .info LR2. No reply from Dan and
sure enough, the 'queue jumping' was repeated in LR2 as I had predicted.

Today I notice that some of the spoils of that .biz2B are being sold on,
even though I understood from Mr Neuman that .biz's integrity would be
protected.

One of the cases I cited in my correspondence with Dan Halloran was the
.biz2B list of Signature Domains. This was an extremely short list indeed,
guaranteeing considerable success, at the expense of ordinary consumers who
consequently lost out.

What was distinctive about Signature Domain's list was two things. Firstly,
the limitation of the list to high-demand names which would be particularly
hard to acquire through the round-robin with a normal list. Secondly, the
fact that the list had no applications from the public, but just a minute
number of applications for Joshua Blacker, one of Signature Domain's own
partners.

The ploy worked. Joshua Blacker got just nine names (and that was the entire
set of names for Signature Domains in the .biz2B)... but look at the names:

cars.biz
finance.biz
gambling.biz
games.biz
insurance.biz
law.biz
realestate.biz
travel.biz
webhosting.biz

Well this was just one of literally scores of issues that occurred during
the NewTLDs launches. There were other more serious ones. But the point
was - ICANN refused to even enter into dialogue about these concerns. They
refused to even acknowledge my correspondence.

Today, if you go here - http://www.games.biz/index.jsp - you can see the
holding site for the Joshua Blacker / Signature List domains.

Today, if you go to Afternic, you can see that games.biz (for example, I
haven't checked the others) is up for sale:
http://www.afternic.com/  (this link is relevant today as it lists games.biz
but will change over time)

Recent Sales

Name  Price*  Date Sold

games.biz  600.00    08/04/2003

To be honest, when you look at the price it's been sold for, it seems hardly
worth the effort. But the point is: ICANN is mandated to ensure the fair
distribution of the DNS. This is just one instance among many, of the way in
which the interests of ICANN's close-knit community of industry insiders
seem to come before ordinary consumers.

(A similar question might be raised by the success of the Afilias directors
Hal Lubsen and Moshe Fogel in obtaining domain.info and domains.info,
Lubsen's DomainBank getting one of them by reserving it before the public or
even TM holders could apply, and Fogel obtaining his by the very use of the
"short list" that I *warned* Dan Halloran would be used again to exploit the
system and queue-jump ordinary customers in ordinary queues. In Fogel's
case, although an Afilias Director, he ran two lists from his twin registrar
companies. One registrar list was open to many more people and therefore got
fewer choice names... it was an ordinary list; the other registrar list (the
one Fogel used for himself) was much much shorter and more exclusive,
resulting in the domains.info "coming home" to the insiders.)

I find it disappointing in the extreme, when I raised this issue (among
various others) with Dan Halloran, and predicted what would repeat in LR2,
that 450 days later he has still completely ignored me, and not even
acknowledged my mail.

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...

So George Kirikos deserves open dialogue and open answers from ICANN on his
interesting points. And Paul Twomey has told the Senate Hearing that
"responsiveness is a priority"... but then I've still not been answered 80
days after I mailed Paul. ICANN seems to do what it wants, and develop
policies as it wants, and consensus is just a 'catchphrase', and
'participation' is just a handle, and 'responsiveness' is virtually
non-existent.

Yrs,

Richard Henderson