Re: [ga] Nomination for representative to the NC Review TF -EricDierker (fwd)

[Eric Dierker <eric@hi-tek.com>]

Mr. Probst,

I am sure you are not right in discussing these matters on the Ga-list but seeing
how I cannot "unring" the bell I guess I will have to address them in detail, and
in fact it is relative to the business at hand.  First of all let us get it clear
you know nothing of our business at all.

Second fact that you have wrong is your understanding of the term launch. Launch is
not a technical term it is a PR marketing term, and you have made it abundantly
clear that you know VNNIC has not marketed it's dotVN until we start tomorrow.

The rest of your reckless post on the ability of Vietnam as a nation is defamatory
to both the Great People of Vietnam and our company.  But I admit it is a common
mistake and one we are hired to correect using a marketing is education and
education is marketing outside-inside global approach. If I sound curt at all
please understand it is not meant that way.

I will work the rest of your post beneath.

Stefan Probst wrote:

> Dear Jeff,
>
> I am not sure, whether this is the right venue to discuss .vn issues.
>
> I forwarded the URLs and the mails to some other people who are working on
> the Net in Vietnam, and their comments were much more harsh than mine. An
> absolutely misleading domain like "vnnic.com" for somebody who maybe
> provides some SW for the registry, or will be a future registrar or
> whatever, is IMHO everything else than honest business behaviour.
>

That is anything but "IMHO".  That is directly accusing our company of unethical
behavior which is defamation anywhere. But I hereby obsolve you based on your
ignorance. We are marketing Vietnam from the outside of Vietnam.  If your claim of
infrastructure problems has any truth we are helping to accommodate solutions to
those problems.

>
> I still don't know what hi-tek is really doing. Their flashy intro is
> inadequate for Vietnam (needs too much scarce bandwidth for slow modem
> connections) and is another gross misleader for everybody who doesn't know
> the real setup.

Do you know how much band width we have in QT City? Do you know how much bandwidth
we have in San Diego?  Do you know what rates we pay? Have you ever done any
marketing?  Do you know what our contract with VDC says?  I am quite sure the
answer to all of the above is no! And I cannot explain them to you as that is
proprietary, but your assumptions are outdated.

>
> Finally, an on-line, credit-card based registration like it is done for the
> gTLDs would indeed turn the present setup on its head.

The last time I was in HCMC and Hanoi, every transaction except taxi's and food was
handled by credit card. When was the last time you visited?  Do you know if
e-commerce outsourcing is part of our project?  Could it be that we even have
associations with some of the dozens of new banks doing business there?  I do not
think Chase & Citibank know you at all. Again proprietary but I am sure you get the
picture.

>
> Besides that it would de-facto sell-out the .vn domain to foreigners
> (because very few Vietnamese have credit cards), there are several other
> issues:

You certainly must not have been in the meeting between our CTO myself and
Secretary General Dr. Truc of the DGPT. No because had you been there you would
understand what a foolish statement the above is. Vietnam is a Socialist Republic,
the Internet is a public resource it must be used, it may not be hoarded or
warehoused and we will implement that policy. We will not allow Verisign type
warehousing to occur.

>
> - until now only natural or legal persons *inside Vietnam* were allowed to
> register a domain....

Until now, we have not *launched* .vn.  Until one year ago you could not be a 100%
owned foreign business.  Until DECISION 128/2000 signed by the Prime Minister on
November 20, 2000, and particular article 12 all of your propositions would have a
little credence.

>
> - until now no generic domains were allowed (e.g. "computers.vn"), but only
> brandnames, company names etc.
> - until now all .vn domains had to be hosted within Vietnam (with very few
> historical exceptions)
> - special licenses were needed to host webcontent ...

Please educate yourself.  Read the directives and decisions that were published
during the National Assembly meetings in May and June.  If you do you will realize
what you are saying is like saying until we had electricity we could not have an
internet. Yes under the old laws we could not do what we are doing.  Both of our
founders are Vietnamese Imigrants and therefor our company obtains the benefits of
the Overseas Vietnamese Investment act. Of course had you called the Consulate and
Embassy and inquired of us I would not be writing this post. And you would not be
eating crow.

>
> Due to their limited experience, the people at the gateway in Vietnam were
> in the past already pulled over the table, e.g. concerning the firewall SW.
> I hope this will not be the case again.

If you had gone to our site at qtcity.com.  You would know that we have formed
educational alliances and partnerships both inside and outside of Vietnam.  Have
you ever ever been to the Hanoi University of Technology.  Have you ever assisted
in obtaining visas for educational exchange programs. Perhaps you could even ask
Danny and Joop if I did not accompany Mr. Thuy the administrator of VNNIC to
Melbourne, where the infamous Register.com offer was made and rejected. They chose
our marketing and educational package instead because we are committed not to .vn
but to Vietnam.  Maybe you should do some research and read my disgustingly mushy
accounts of my shoeshine boy.

>
> On-line registration will need some kind of whois. Are there privacy rules
> in place?
> Do they have a Domain Dispute Resolution Policy? Arbitrators?

The tightest privacy in the world. In large part due to the marvelous contributions
of Ms. Lane on this list.  Also Mr. Williams assisted me in drafting the provisions
to keep it in line with international treaties and the pending 200+ page Bilateral
Trade Agreement. We will be developing a voluntary Domain Name Dispute Resolution
Policy on line on a site attached to our engine.  It will be an 100% open and
transparent process. Obviously we will be complying with any valid court or
government orders.  There will be no reverse hijacking.

you further wrote;
On-line credit-card payments need https protocol, which includes

> encryption. Encryption is by the letter of the rules usually illegal (all
> the customers would need a permission). Will Hi-Tek get the rules changed
> first, or just produce again another factum which defies the rules?

Well it looks like by this point in your writing you were starting to get the big
picture. Yes I am by trade a Policy Analyst that has been forced by circumstance to
become an Internet Strategist, who by his thesis in government regulations of
speech issues, obtained his Juris Doctorate in 1983.  As you can see some laws have
changed and others we are changing.  All of the companies we refer to in Vietnam
must be fully private by 2005.  Note also we will not use cookies in our engine.

>
>
> Finally, you continue to state that the .vn ccTLD will be launched. (to be
> precise: you say "I still, as of now, stand by that original statement.",
> which was "[he is] actively involved in the Registry business with the up
> and coming launching of the .VN ccTLD.). This is plain nonsense.
> Registrations in the .vn were done previously off-line, with that
> registration engine maybe soon also on-line. But an additional registration
> procedure doesn't mean that the ccTLD is launched now, when it has been up
> an running since years already.
> Hi-Tek might do their internal launch, but this is not what you said. You
> either were informed quite wrongly, or were trying to make a big
> impression, hoping that nobody would discover the bluff.
>

The term launch comes from the idea of launching a Military Campaign.  It is used
for marketing campaigns and we will launch ours tommorrow. Mr. Williams was
absolutely right on this issue.  Your notion that it refers to a date that the
ccTLD becomes operational is wrong. But I forgive you this because you obviously do
not hang out with us sleazy marketer types;-}

I do want your apology, not to me but to the people of Vietnam.  Never has a people
moved so quickly from a closed society to an open free market economy.  But it will
do them little good if  self proclaimed "Vietnam Experts" continue to tell the
world that it still has the same rules it had in 1998.

Please take this off list and contact our CEO Thomas Johnson directly at
858-571-8431 in San Diego.  Since you have knowledge of Vietnam and obvious
technical skills he has said he would like to speak with you regarding joint
projects in the future. He tells me to relate to you that anyone who takes an avid
interest in helping Vietnam is welcomed to open dialogue.

Sincerely,
Eric


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