[NA-Discuss] [offlist] Domain hijacking story

[Evan Leibovitch]

Indeed, many applicants are promising many things. But, even on paper, they
have no more authority and trustworthiness than any politician's
election-time pledges.

This is application time. Especially under contention, some applicants are
fighting to see whose entry can be made most noble. But, under the current
process, there is no obligation for them to keep these promises the day
after delegation. The current enforceability of "Public Interest
Commitments" being offered by some applications is very much subject to
ongoing speculation due to their ambiguity and afterthought-type
introduction into the application process, not to mention the lack of a
well-thought-out enforcement regime.

(I believe the original enforcement method trotted out would force parties
who were "wronged" by breach of a PIC to complain -- AT THEIR EXPENSE -- to
a third-party UDRP-type resolution provider. Insanity!!)

For a precedent that responds to Alan's comment about "professional" TLDs,
we need look no further than their immediate ancestor, ".pro" -- which
abandoned its credentialling requirements under financial stress (with ZERO
negative consequences from ICANN).

But that wasn't the first registry to take its TLD beyond its original
intended purpose. The .NET TLD was not originally designed as a place for
online casinos. Amd arguably, PIR would not need to apply for ".NGO" had
.org been maintained for the purposes under which it was originally
created. So we have precedents of TLDs that promised a valuable exclusivity
but -- faced with economic stress -- threw the doors open without
consequence. And in the next round we really don't have any effective
prevention against more to come.

- Evan



On 13 June 2013 21:58, Alan Greenberg <alan.greenberg at mcgill.ca> wrote:

> Eric, on what do you base this?  There are many new TLDs that plan to
> have very specific and restrictive requirements that must be met by
> applicants. Example, some of the .health applicants that will limit
> registrants to licensed professionals. Same goes for many of the
> "professional" designation TLDs.
>
> Alan