[ga] Serious questions left unanswered by Hal Lubsen and Afilias

["Richard Henderson" <richardhenderson@ntlworld.com>]

I note with regret that Hal Lubsen (CEO of Afilias) has failed to respond to
my specific and detailed concerns, voiced on behalf of many members of the
Internet community who have got no answer from him on the ICANN and
gTLD-Registries forums. He has also failed to reply to a succession of
messages sent to him directly. Our concern, clearly expressed, was that
consumers were defrauded by the Afilias roll-out, and that Hal Lubsen's
company DomainBank had profited from the submission of ineligible data in
the Sunrise, at the expense of honest customers. The evidence for this has
been presented in detail in the forums mentioned above, and is all in the
public domain.

We were also dismayed that over half of all fake Sunrise claims had been
submitted, for profit, by Afilias executives or directors. We shared the
view of honest Afilias director Robert Connelly that this Sunrise fraud and
roll-out was "an abomination".

Honest Landrush customers were defrauded of (in the region of) $3million and
workable solutions were not put in place to protect their interests, in the
wake of Afilias's defective Sunrise processes.

Hal Lubsen is a member of these forums/fora but has failed to respond to
these very serious concerns. Of course, everyone knows that he is under no
obligation to answer any questions raised here, but bearing in mind that a
major purpose of the forums is to promote "openness and transparency", his
failure to answer serious issues directed specifically at him is hugely
disappointing.

Is this a rogue industry where the customer is simply ignored?

Or could Hal Lubsen simply give open and transparent answers to questions
put to him.

I find his silence and evasion a dismal sign of the contempt in which honest
customers appear to be held. I am co-operating closely with Ram Mohan of
Afilias over the Challenge process, and it was my own website -
TheInternetChallenge - which first brought the scale of the Fraud to the
attention of the public at a time when Roland laPlante was hailing Sunrise
as a success and denying the numbers we were quoting. I have nothing to gain
or lose in all this personally. However I do believe Mr Lubsen has a duty to
the Internet community to explain - in total honesty, openness and
transparency - why he thought it was alright for his company (and the
company Speednames, represented on the Afilias board) to receive a total in
the region of $513,000 to support the submission of thousands of names with
"NONE" placed in all fields, or facially ineligible details, with the result
that Afilias's own system was abused and honest consumers robbed of millions
of dollars in the overall fraud (because they had paid for the chance to
'win' these names at Landrush, and they were deprived of that paid-for-right
by the fraudulent applications submitted by Hal Lubsen's DomainBank and by
Speednames and certain other registrars.

I also believe we, as consumers, have a right to honest and open answers as
to why - when these fraudsters publicly admitted their deception - their
fake Sunrise names were not immediately returned to the pool in time for
Landrush. Why, for example, William Lorenz sent 23 (documented) e-mails
admitting 93 names submitted by DomainBank (who profited around $13000 for
these alone) were totally fake, and in an effort to put things right,
requested that Mr Lubsen delete all 93 names so honest customers could get
them... and yet these repeated requests were declined.

And again, why Board members of Afilias are STILL holding Sunrise fakes
themselves, five months after submitting fake data, and yet the Afilias CEO
has presided over that (check out Hawaii.info for example).

And why the commonsense "Domebase" solution proposed by Professor Connor was
dismissed, when it would have safeguarded everyone.

And why in all these five months, Mr Lubsen has failed to enter into
dialogue or respond to these points.

Come on Hal, please do the decent thing and answer.

Happy New Year to everyone

Richard Henderson
(www.theinternetchallenge.com)



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