Re: [ga] Story Behind .ASIA - The shell game is afoot...

["Richard Henderson" <richardhenderson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yes perhaps,

But unfortunately Afilias does *not* have a record of outstanding rectitude.

I refer you to the breaches of contract implicit in the $500,000 Speednames
(member of the Afilias cartel of registrars) charged Konrad Plankenstein to
register 4981 invalid domain names through Afilias. (Won't go into the fact
that Tina Dam, the current ICANN Registry Manager, had oversight for
Speedname's introduction of .info at the time!!!). I also refer you to the
William Lorenz case, where DomainBank (um... Hal Lubsen) charged $15000 to
submit .info Sunrise domains in breach of the Afilias contract, and Afilias
(um... also Hal Lubsen) went ahead and registered them, even though they
lacked the mandatory data fields required by ICANN's Agreement. Or I could
refer you to the delightful Govinda Leopold (1stDomain.net) who was an
Afilias Director, but submitted domains for application in breach of
Afilias's own rules (eg fake trademarks). I refer you to Afilias's various
accredited registrars like Yesnic who faked 100s of false trademarks to get
Sunrise names which were subsequently confiscated by WIPO. I refer you as
well to the abandonment of the 1000s of Landrush customers as a result of
Afilias's mismanagement, a failure of responsibility which resigning Afilias
Director Robert Connelly described in disgust as the "Sunrise abomination".

I will give you credit, Ram, that you helped to pick up the pieces for
Afilias - and you were actually open and responsive at that stage - but of
course both you and Afilias were engaged in a massive damage limitation
exercise.

I have never trusted Afilias since that day, and nor have thousands of other
people who lost hundreds of thousands of pounds (and it probably ran to
millions) as a result of the collapse of Afilias's Sunrise process and their
refusal to protect the interests of the honest participants in Landrush 1.

Why then should Afilias be trusted to operate .asia with anything other than
self-interest in mind?

Yrs,

Richard Henderson

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ram Mohan" <rmohan@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Jeff Williams" <jwkckid1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>; "General Assembly of the DNSO"
<ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; "icann board address" <icann-board@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: "Paul Twomey" <twomey@xxxxxxxxx>; "James Seng" <jseng@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, April 15, 2005 8:19 PM
Subject: Re: [ga] Story Behind .ASIA - The shell game is afoot...


> Mr. Cheng is an individual of outstanding rectitude.
>
> .ASIA is currently under evaluation, and therefore I will not comment on
the
> accuracy or lack thereof of various comments posted on the Internet.
>
> -Ram