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Re: [ga] Lynn's Response to New.net "Policy Paper"


I have not posted much lately, but there are times when erroneous information must be refuted. Since it is unlikely that ICANN will take not of my response to Ben Edelman's erroneous conclusions to research based on erroneous assumptions, I will post some information here.

From the ICANN publication:

>>"9. Indeed, there is a recent illustration of this phenomenon. ICANN first began accepting expressions of interest in the creation of new TLDs in July 2000; among those submitted in July were two separate expressions of interest </yokohama/eoi.htm> in a .biz TLD. At about that same time, according to statements by its owner, a company known as Atlantic Root Network, Inc. (ARNI) arranged to take over a previously existing but dormant .biz TLD offered by another alternate root operator. ICANN subsequently accepted applications for new TLDs during a period which ended on 2 October 2000 </tlds/tld-applications-lodged-02oct00.htm>; five separate applications requested a .biz TLD. As best as can be documented, ARNI began accepting public registrations in its .biz TLD on October 23, 2000. ICANN selected one of the .biz proposals to be one of the seven new TLDs included in its initial proof of concept; by the time that happened, the ARNI .biz had 297 registrations, in the name of a total of five individuals, and 178 of those (60%) were in the name of ARNI's President. Given these facts, and particularly the congruity of the timing in relation to the ICANN process, it seems clear that this activity was driven by a desire to preempt this TLD string without having to participate in the ICANN community consensus process. See "Analysis of Registrations in the ARNI .BIZ Top-Level Domain <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/edelman/dotbiz/>." <<

First, and very important to ICANN's #9 is that it is based upon Ben Edelman's report, which in turn is based on his erroneous assumption that the registry was not open prior to October 23, 2000. .BIZ was open for registrations in May, 2000 after some months of discussion regarding our taking over management of TLD. All registrations prior to the launch of the online registration system were re-entered and date stamped to extend them for one or more years from that time.

One of the earliest .BIZ domain websites was hosted on May 30, 2000.

In addition, those registrants who had not yet set up their online accounts had their names entered in the ARNI "reserve" account until such time as they establish individual accounts and the POSSR (registration system) upgrade is completed. Our response to the Edelman report is posted both on his site and at http://www.biztld.net/edelman.html. As I said, if a report is based on an erroneous assumption, the report's conclusions are erroneous. It is also important to note that the number of registrations at any given time is not particularly important to the overall fact that the TLD existed and was operational prior to any ICANN expression of interest AND the fact that the creation date is 1995. It must also be obvious that if on online registration system was launched in early October, it had been in development for some months prior to that. That's called deductive reasoning.

Further, all those who expressed interest in .BIZ in July were contacted to inform them that it already existed. When applications were lodged, all applicants were notified and messages were placed on the ICANN message board. It is notable that ICANN did not mention these notifications, although they were and are aware of them.

In addition, Simon Higgs posted the message (below) stating an accurate timeline for ARNI's .BIZ. When we were setting up the administration of .BIZ, there was not even a hint of anyone planning to use that string from ICANN's side. In May, when the delegation by the roots was completed, there was still no hint anywhere else.

The lack of documentation by Mr. Edelman was due to his not asking for it and ICANN's blindly accepting an erroneuos report. This is not surprising. The information was posted both on Mr. Edelman's site and the biztld.net site immediately after the report was published. The notice of that response was posted in several places.

It is not good when disinformation is posted on these lists. It is much worse when it is published by ICANN on that website and with no signature. Once again, no one contacted ARNI to verify that information.

-------------------------------------

Simin Higgs post to ga-roots:

at 05:48 PM 6/19/01 -0400, you wrote:

Date sent: Tue, 19 Jun 2001 18:00:31 -0700
To: ga-roots@dnso.org
From: Simon Higgs <simon@higgs.com>
Subject: Re: [ga-roots] Edelman's report on BIZ

At 05:48 PM 6/19/01 -0400, you wrote:

There was a lot of discussion before May 2000 about the .BIZ re- delegation. There was a concern that even though .BIZ (requested from IANA by Denninger on July 1st 1996) was an asset of MCS and part of the business that was sold to Winstar, that if Winstar had not taken possession of .BIZ, or had abandoned .BIZ, then the delegation reverted back to Karl who was the last active contact for the zone. If Winstar had said "here's our DNS, point .BIZ here", then that probably would have been the end of the matter. But they were not able to provide any proof or evidence of either active use or that they even wanted .BIZ. Karl washed his hands of the whole thing, and the .BIZ zone was declared abandoned and available for re-delegation to ARN who were asking for it. ARN took possession of it around May 2000.

The ICANN time-line shows that .BIZ was re-delegated prior to receipt of any "expressions of interest" or TLD applications being made public. The ICANN BoD agreed to pursue new TLDs at Yokohama in July 2000. The expressions of interest were posted from July 9th 2000 onwards as they were received:

http://www.icann.org/yokohama/eoi.htm

EOI 25, posted after July 9th, states "At this time NeuStar prefers not to comment on what specific new TLDs should be selected". It appears that Neustar's game plan was to read everyone else's proposals before deciding which TLD string to try to steal. The announcement for the "New TLD Application Process" was made August 3rd 2000:

http://www.icann.org/announcements/icann-pr03aug00.htm

Applications were due by October 2nd 2000. The TLD strings from the applications were not made public until that date, so there's no way anyone could have "skimmed the ICANN proposals" several months before they existed. In any case there were five applicants for .BIZ. The earliest date anyone could speculate about .BIZ is months after ORSC re-delegated .BIZ to ARN.

____________________________

Sincerely,

Leah Gallegos
The Original, Authentic .BIZ TLD
admin@biztld.net
info@nic.biz (no guarantee it will be received by the intended recipient due to duplication by ICANN of the .biz TLD)






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