Re: [ga] Voice of the Public

[Jeff Williams <jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com>]

Danny and all stakeholders or interested parties,

  Again Danny as you should know Affilias like many

DannyYounger@cs.com wrote: of the ICANN BoD "Accredited" Registrars
and now Registries, engage in very questionable practices as has been
reported
over and over again to the ICANN BoD and staff along with the DOC/NTIA
without adequate action taken.  As a employee of Register.com you should

know this all to well!  Affialias which is one of the old CORE see
Cornic.com is one of the want to be registries in the IAHC/GTLD-MoU
days which was an effort that the DOC finally had to put the stops to
because of it's questionable statements and business practices.  It
seems
that again they up to the same old game, with just a different name
behind
them.

>    he recently posted agenda for the 9 September Public Forum in
> Montevideo
> includes the topic "
> Issues and process for evaluation of new TLDs".
>
> You may wish to take note of this comment posted to ICANN's off-topic
> forum
> that raises some legitimate concerns:
>
> "Greetings ICANN Community,
>
> Following is the text of a news story I have written and attempted to
> publish
> in the news media, but because Afilias has shut down their WHOIS
> service, the
> facts cannot be verified at this time by the news publishers.  Story
> follows:
>
> The much anticipated launch of ".INFO", the first of seven new
> ICANN-approved
> gTLDs to augment the availability of ".com" and ".net" domain names,
> got
> underway on August 1st when Afilias (http://www.afilias.info) , the
> registrar
> awarded management of the .info gTLD, began its "Sunrise" advance
> registration for trademark-holders worldwide.  The first round Sunrise
>
> registrations were awarded by lottery among customer entries submitted
>
> earlier through dozens of retail domain registrars, and the results
> were
> posted late yesterday on the Afilias website (http://www.afilias.info)
>
> through their WHOIS lookup.
>
> But the .info launch is permeated with fraudulent registrations by
> trademark
> imposters, and despite Afilias' preparations for the launch, no steps
> have
> been taken to prevent trademark fraud by Sunrise registrants.
> According to
> registration requirements posted on both the Afilias website
> (http://www.afilias.info/faq/ip-owners.html) and the ICANN website
> (http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/info/registry-agmt-appj-11ma
> 01.htm)
> each Sunrise registration must be for a domain name exactly matching
> the
> trademark name, registered in the national trademark registry of a
> recognized
> country, registered before October 2, 2000.  But the Sunrise
> registrations
> for such notable domain names as "china.info", "japan.info",
> "australia.info", "cruises.info", "rice.info" and "taxes.info"
> indicate
> trademark names having no similarity to the domain name, and in one
> case the
> trademark is simply "unknown".
>
> Domain names such as "lasvegas.info" were registered with trademark
> numbers
> that simply do not exist in the U.S. Trademark online database,
> strongly
> indicating their questionable authenticity. Patrick Nobriga registered
> the
> Sunrise domain names "Reno.info", "LosAngeles.info", "chicken.info"
> and
> "beef.info" all using the same trademark number "137636599", which
> does not
> exist in the U.S. Trademark online database. Patrick also successfully
>
> registered the Sunrise domain name "news.info" using the trademark
> number
> "123456789". Should we look that one up too?
>
> Sunrise registrations such as "taxes.info", "Japan.info", and
> "China.info"
> have trademark dates later than October 2, 2000 (the "taxes.info"
> trademark
> submittal indicates a date just last week, July 27, 2001).  Yet these
> domains
> were accepted and processed in the Afilias Sunrise registration
> without
> question."Employment.info" and "Hotels.info" were both registered
> using the
> same Israel-issued trademark number 153278563 during the Sunrise
> period to
> Cass Foster of Communigal Communications.  Nice domain names; but
> which one,
> if any, is the real Israeli trademark 153278563?And the enterprising
> Stephen
> Rumney of World Information Services has entered authentic-looking
> Egyptian
> trademark numbers for "Asia.info", "Jobs.info", "Loans.info", and
> "Sports.info", but the trademark names are "asiainfo", "jobsinfo",
> "loansinfo", and "sportsinfo" which should have resulted in the domain
> names
> "AsiaInfo.info", "JobsInfo.info" etc.
>
> Despite years of planning by ICANN, and  months of contract
> negotiations
> between ICANN and Afilias, extensive public relations by Afilias, and
> extensive certification processes for .info authorized registrars,
> Afilias'
> disregard for obviously fraudulent trademark submissions during the
> Sunrise
> period has prevented tens of thousands of legitimate customers from
> competing
> for non-trademarked domain names during the public registration
> periods that
> will not open until September 2001.  Now that these important domain
> names
> have been fraudulently awarded during the Sunrise registration they
> are no
> longer available for legitimate customers until after a lengthy and
> costly
> "Sunrise Challenge" process or through legal action in the courts.
>
> Perhaps disgruntled domain name customers could visit
> www.attorneys.info to
> find an attorney who might file a class-action lawsuit, but...ooops!
> The
> domain name "attorneys.info" was registered during the Sunrise period
> to
> Gregory Carbonaro using U.S. Trademark No. 2469675, and  according to
> the
> U.S. Patent Office online database at http://www.uspto.gov the U.S.
> Trademark
> 2469675 was issued in July 2001 to the Dairy Farmers of America for a
> form of
> dried skim milk trademarked "Savortex"; not "Attorneys".
>
> http://forum.icann.org/cgi-bin/rpgmessage.cgi?offtopic;3
> 6B40BD0000070B

Regards,

--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup - (Over 118k members strong!)
CEO/DIR. Internet Network Eng/SR. Java/CORBA Development Eng.
Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC.
E-Mail jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com
Contact Number:  972-447-1800 x1894 or 214-244-4827
Address: 5 East Kirkwood Blvd. Grapevine Texas 75208


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