[registrars] Afilias Response to Bhavin's earlier Posting

["Michael D. Palage" <michael@palage.com>]

Hello All:

I have been asked by the Afilias management to forward this correspondence
to the list in response to Bhavin's earlier posting regarding the Afilias
Sunrise Challenge of Last Resort.

Best regards,

Mike




To: ICANN Registrar Constituency
From: Afilias
Reference: Turakhia Registrar Posting w/r/t .INFO Challenges

We note Mr. Turakhia's recent posting to the Registrar Constituency mailing
list regarding the ".INFO names still unchallenged."  We regret that he
failed to contact Afilias to ascertain the facts surrounding this process.
As a result, there are a number of gross inaccuracies in his posting.

First, all of Mr. Plankenstein's domains HAVE been challenged.  Mr.
Plankenstein's 140 allegedly unchallenged domain names are not part of LR2
because they have not yet completed the challenge process.  Second, many of
the people or organizations that Mr. Turakhia has alleged as committing
fraud show numerous legitimate trademark owners who used an alias account
through a common registrar.  In other instances, registrars inadvertently
supplied incorrect registrant data, which they later corrected in the Shadow
database.  Mr. Turakhia evidently relied on the original, faulty data.

Regarding the 6 specific names cited by Turakhia:
-- You will note in the Whois that the 3 Plankenstein names (alava.info,
aragon.info, avila.info) remain locked. All three were challenged by members
of the public.  Two remain subject to Afilias challenges of last resort, and
the winning public challenger has not yet taken possession of the third.
-- The other three (accelerator.info, airwear.info, findus.info) were either
challenged by Afilias or found to be valid Sunrise registrations.

None of Mr. Turakhia's examples hold up against the facts, and his
conclusions are deeply flawed.

Afilias has expended a significant amount of resources attempting to
identify inappropriate registrations, and when qualified trademark owners
have established proof of their rights in a mark we have withdrawn
challenges.  Afilias acknowledges that there may still be inappropriate
Sunrise Registrations and believes that it has used reasonable safeguards to
identify a significant number of inappropriate registrations.  Further,
aggrieved parties have recourse to the Uniform Domain Name Dispute
Resolution Policy (UDRP) and the legal system to resolve remaining issues.

We suggest to Mr. Turakhia that, should he have any additional questions or
comments in the future, it would be beneficial to the greater community to
verify the facts before making public comments.

Best regards,
Afilias