[council] Re: Open Letter to Mr Jeff Neuman from The Internet Challenge

[vint cerf <vinton.g.cerf@wcom.com>]

Richard,

One question that bears on this process is whether any interested party
did not experience fair opportunity to register a name. That's not quite
what you were asking but it has relevance to assessing sunrise processes.
The second question is whether any of the registrars were, effectively,
trading on their own accounts (that is, not registering names they intended
to use themselves or on behalf of customers but intended hold and sell at
a later time). I don't know whether the current registrar agreements with
ICANN treat the specifics of your questions below, but I will try to find
out.

vint

At 01:20 AM 4/15/2002 +0100, Richard Henderson wrote:
>Dear Jeff and Vint
>
>I'd like to ask your advice on ICANN and Neulevel's policy with regard to
>Registrars applying for names (particularly in queued Landrush situations)
>on their own behalf. As you know, I have already alluded to concerns I had
>over Signature Domains, and I look forward to some kind of response - to the
>principles, if not to the personal details, of this case.
>
>I'd also like to draw to your attention - without making any allegations -
>the case of 007names. In the recent .biz Group 2B names release, 465 names
>were registered through them, with over half (258) going to their client
>Vitty Inc.
>
>These names were issued to Paul Chou, e-mail address domain@Vitty.com . In
>the "About" section of Vitty.com there is more information about Mr Chou. It
>notes that he founded a company called Webex.net (a registrar, parent
>company of sinonet.com, no reference to vitty.com) with his wife, Joyce Lin.
>Further whois searches found that the Admin, Billing and Tech Contacts for
>007names.com is Joyce Lin of Bridgewater, NJ. 007names.com is hosted by
>(surprise) webex.net on the same server as vitty.com.  Webex.net of
>Bridgewater, NJ comes up as non-existent in the WHOIS server release 1.0,
>but in version 1.3 they show that 007Names, Inc. is their registrar.
>
>My questions are these: are registrars allowed to apply for names in
>landrush situations through their own Registrar company? Are the families of
>Registrars allowed to apply for - say - the majority of names submitted in a
>queue? Do a husband and wife constitute a single entity? Does a Registrar
>have the right to exploit the advantage of their own position to dominate a
>queue, in a way which might disadvantage many other people?
>
>I'm not making a personal observation on the actions of Vitty Inc or
>007names. I'm curious about the facts behind their dealings. But my approach
>to you is in order to get clarification of the rules (which obviously impact
>on other consumers). I would also respectfully ask you to investigate this
>specific case if you feel that any rules have been broken and your other
>customers have been disadvantaged in breach of any agreements.
>
>If no rules have been broken, then probably no personal criticism is
>appropriate, but in that scenario I would call into question the processes
>that have been set up between ICANN, the Registry and its registrars, as
>there seem to me to be inadequate safeguards for the majority of ordinary
>customers, and too much scope for what I would describe as "insider dealing"
>in the distribution of what should be made publicly available to everybody
>on fair and level terms.
>
>Many thanks for your attention.
>
>Richard Henderson