Re: [ga] Registerfly loses approximately 75,000 customer domains

[Jeff Williams <jwkckid1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Karl and all,

  IMHO, you essentially got this right.  My guess is that Veni as an
Ex Bod member, and Roberto are more motivated be covering their
own backsides rather than seeking solutions.  In any event it seems
the ICANN VP has crafted a belated and again IMHO, a inadequate
solution.  All that may remain, is whether or not his solution will pass
legal muster when ICANN and/or Registryfly/eNom are sued for
damages by registrants whom were damaged.

  However I also believe the NTIA and the DOJ have a significant
role they can play here if any registrant or group of registrants whom
have been damaged by Registerfly, and ICANN as a result of
ICANN's feet dragging in addressing these complaints, by ordering
both Registerfly and ICANN's Bod and staff members past and
present to send a letter to any and all registrants effected by
this and ask each one to submit what they believe is the amount
of financial damage they have reasonably incurred and make
restitution to each one of these damaged registrants which meets
what they, the registrants, are willing to settle on.  Otherwise
I believe we will see a ground swell from states AG's offices
seeking to protect their citizens, similar to what Mass. is considering
now.  Mass. new legislation will carry mandatory Jail sentences as
well as significant fines for first offenses of this nature.

Karl Auerbach wrote:

> Roberto Gaetano wrote:
>
> > The role of the Ombudsman is not to deal with all sorts of consumer rights
> > protection issues, but to address the cases in which the damage is created
> > by an unfair decision of the Board.
>
> I would suggest that that is too narrow of an interpretation of the ombudsman role.
>
> Let's begin by remembering that the ombudsman was sold to us as part of the
> "reform" package that stripped (without their consent and perhaps in violation
> of the law of California) the community of internet users of their ability to
> pick and elect members of the board of directors.  Those directors had the
> ability to intervene in ICANN matters with an authority that is based on law
> and is clearly superior to that of any hired ombudsman.  So it is consistent
> with the purpose to give the ombudsman role a broader rather than a narrower
> interpretation.
>
> In addition, ICANN also used the ombudsman role as a partial replacement for
> the never formed independent review panel.  Again this argues for a broader
> interpretation rather than a narrower one.
>
> Morever the review function of an ombudsman role is to look at the functioning
> and mal-functioning of all parts of ICANN, not merely the board.
>
> In the case of registerfly there was an apparent malfunction with regard to
> staff's non-response to the accumulating mass of complaints.  Taken
> individually one could say that these were not ombudsman matters, but taken as
> a cumulative mass they indicated that ICANN was not doing what it said it was
> doing, which is to enforce the obligations of registrars under their agreements
> with ICANN.
>
> Part of the difficulty is that the incumbent ombudsman is a person who sees
> trees and never perceives the forest, and is a person who seems intent finding
> ways to avoid than in ways to solve.  An amusing comparison can be made between
> ICANN's ombudsman and The Circumlocution Office as described by Dickens in
> Chapter 10 of the novel "Little Dorrit" -
> http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/ldort10.txt
>
> ICANN's "reform" created both the ombudsman role and the ALAC, both have proved
> to be inadequate replacements for directors nominated and elected by the
> community of internet users.  The sign of a progressive, enlightened
> organization is that it corrects such mistakes.
>
>                 --karl--

Regards,

--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 134k members/stakeholders strong!)
"Obedience of the law is the greatest freedom" -
   Abraham Lincoln

"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]
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