[NA-Discuss] Fwd: "Domain Protection Racket" Promotion on Network Solutions Home Page

Garth Bruen at Knujon.com gbruen at knujon.com
Wed Aug 31 12:48:04 UTC 2011


People might be more at ease with gTLD expansion if the dispute process was 
sound, I'd be wary of anyone who says it is. The current UDRP works in favor 
of cybersquatters and the Registrars who sponsor them (who, in some case 
have been shown to be one in the same). The process only works if the 
plaintiff truly wants a disputed domain name. Against the bad-faith 
registrant, there is no recourse especially if the registrant is behind a 
privacy service. The defaulted domains in these cases are worthless to the 
plaintiff once transferred (in fact worth-less because they have to spend 
money to get the worthless domains where the bad-faith registrant spends 
zero dollars in default.

And for all the prostrations, Registrars are not blameless in this as they 
have developed special search engines which make cybersquatting in bulk 
easy.

--------------------------------------------------
From: "John R. Levine" <johnl at iecc.com>
Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2011 5:11 PM
To: "Volker Greimann" <vgreimann at key-systems.net>
Cc: <na-discuss at atlarge-lists.icann.org>
Subject: Re: [NA-Discuss] Fwd: "Domain Protection Racket" Promotion on 
Network Solutions Home Page

>> In other words: "Please don't practice armchair quarterbacking, if you
>> do not like the way the ICANN policies are going, join your respective
>> community and participate in the consensus building process!"
>
> Been there, done that, got several nice shirts.
>
> In case it's not obvious, ICANN is about as egregious a case of regulatory
> capture as you could imagine.  Despite pious noises to the contrary, ICANN
> exists to serve the registries and registrars who pay its bills.  It
> doesn't help that a chronically weak board has never been able to exert
> more than nominal supervision over the staff.
>
> While the ALAC and other peripheral groups have some modest effect around
> the edges, e.g., we might get them to say that pre-registration is bad,
> the bottom-up stuff is mostly a way to try to deny the authority that
> governments, particularly the US government, have over ICANN.
>
> At this point, effective changes to ICANN will only come via government
> directives and lawsuits in US courts, not through bottom-up wishful
> thinking.
>
> R's,
> John
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>
> The door is always open and I still hope that they will join At-Large
> someday. But they will have to play by the rules of consensus, like all
> of us. Sometimes we want something but the majority does not. It's
> frustrating sometimes, but that's the name of the game.
> Warm regards,
>

In other words: "Please don't practice armchair quarterbacking, if you
do not like the way the ICANN policies are going, join your respective
community and participate in the consensus building process!"

I agree that this is what the critics should do, however, it costs hours
upon hours of unpaid voluntary work to participate in the process, but
only a few minutes to publicly criticize the result. Due to this simple
arithmetic of cost vs. benefit, ICANN will always have to deal with
uninformed detractors on any decision that is made, no matter how well
thought-out and well debated the decision is.

>  That was my point exactly when I spoke with Farber; and yet, there is
>  total ignorance of the bottom-up model outside of ICANN, there is a
>  general accusation that At-Large just pays lip service to ICANN and that
>  ICANN is just controlled entirely by contracted parties wishing to make
>  a quick buck through a "domain protection racket", a term I personally
>  find offensive. Real life "protection rackets" are a completely
>  different ballgame involving physical threats.

Picturing the "domain protection racket and borrowing from Monty Python:
"You have a nice brand there, we wouldn't want anything to happen to it,
do we? You ought to be careful, 'cos things break, don't they? Domain
names, eh? Be a shame if someone was to set fire to them..."

-- 
Best regards,

Volker A. Greimann

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