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The ICANN website has an online complaint form.

To quote from the site in question:

Although ICANN's limited technical mission does not include resolving individual customer-service complaints, ICANN does monitor such complaints to discern trends.

Let your voices be heard!

Hmm...looks like SiteFinder is already one of the most visited sites on the Internet!

2,268th most visit site on the web according to Alexa -- gotta love CPM advertising.

<http://www.icann.org/correspondence/iab-message-t o-lynn-25jan03.htm>

What happened? I STRONGLY URGE that complaints be made to ICANN and the US DoC...right now.

This is so much worse than many folks think.

It seems that they have effectively violated the ICANN Domain Name Dispute Policy: "circumstances indicating that you have registered or you have acquired the domain name primarily for the purpose of selling, renting, or otherwise transferring the domain name registration". They're definitely doing this to sell domains.

Bill

gTLD Registry operators WILL return NXDOMAIN for ALL DNS queries for which there is not a REGISTERED domain name.

We do blacklists for spam because it originates from multiple moving targets.

Verisign is neither multiple nor moving. Instead of sullying our libraries with this stupidity, put your effort into beating Verisign into submission to common decency.

they were granted the power to run the root servers and manage primary DNS by the federal government.

Actually, the US government transferred that to ICANN some time ago. ICANN currently contracts VeriSign to run the SOA for the roots and GTLDs, and other companies and organizations run the other nameservers.

Of course, ICANN could drop the hammer on VeriSign, but given ICANN's past performance, I doubt they will. Apparently, other TLD operators have already tried this, and the slap on the wrist was easily ignored.

Yeah, good point. My bad.

Anyway, this sort of data representation has been done for years.

I found this list of tools.

I say if they go ahead with this, ICANN should yank their registrar status. This is in blatant disregard of Internet standard (RFC, good practice, etc.) and should not be tolerated in any way.

I wrote the following letter to ICANN when it first cropped up:

Hello,

We already have the example of WLS in Verisign abusing its monopoly (and ICANN not stopping this abuse -- see www.stopwls.com).

Planning to monetize all typos by rewriting DNS error codes to instead point to itself (i.e. instead of returning error codes, it will no longer return errors, but instead bring the surfer to Verisign money-making pages) is yet another example of an abusive monopolist. See here:

"Some organizations have shown a propensity to make technical changes happen and then ask for permission later," Afilias's Mohan said. "Given the economics of it, I think that's what will happen here."

Given the huge technical standards that Verisign would be violating, as well as the Intellectual Property and economic issues (e.g. a typo of one letter of your domain name could send a client to a search engine listing your competitor as #1, or worse; John Zuccarini is in JAIL for his typo-squatting!), can someone in the Names Council, or the ICANN Board that has a spinal column please pre-empt this Verisign move by forbidding unilateral action of such a nature by means of a vote of some kind, through the introduction of a motion?

From the comments at ICANNWatch when this abuse last came up, perhaps the way to frame the motion is "gTLD Registry operators WILL return NXDOMAIN for ALL DNS queries for which where there is not a REGISTERED domain name." Period.

Once you start tampering with things at the DNS level, as Verisign is intending to do, you threaten the security and stability of the internet, as I think Vint Cerf properly recognizes (being right at least half of the time; bad call on WLS, but the courts and the US governmet will take care of that one eventually). For a company whose slogan is "The Value of Trust", Verisign makes a mockery of the caretaker role it has been given as guardian of the com/net registries. I trust them as much as I trust John Zuccarini.

If the US government had a problem with Microsoft embedding the Internet Explorer browser into its operating system, what will they think given Verisign has an even greater monopoly when it comes to DNS resolution? The power should belong to the users, who should have the choice (through their own software) how to resolve errors. That's why we have technical standards. Making that decision for them, by BREAKING technical standards and the applications that rely on those standards, as Verisign plans to do, and making loads of $$$$ while doing it, smacks of an abusive father-knows-best monopolist. Verisign is the father you wish you never had! Calling it a "service" adds insult to injury, as they did with WLS, especially when it's a MONOPOLY service, for which one has no choice. When you make a typo for a telephone call, does the 1-800 operator (AT&T, MCI, Neustar?) start playing paid jingles for your competitors, instead of telling you that you misdialled via a message?

Ultimately, folks know Verisign wants to milk every last penny out of its monopolies, and doesn't care who they have to step on to do so. Take a look at Games.TV which shows:

games.tv is available and can be registered immediately for $100,000.00/year

to understand what Verisign's goals are (Verisign runs .tv). Do you think you really own your .com domains? What price would Verisign like to charge you for your domains?? Once they wipe out some registrars through WLS, and other monopoly abuses, who will be left to stop them?

If Verisign is permitted to g

Approval Voting suffers from the same documented flaws as... well, all other methods! Viz, it violates at least one of:

* pareto optimality
* independence of irrelevant alternatives
* non-dictatorship
* universal domain
* [dammit there's one other but I can't recall!]

and it leads people to misrepresent their preferences. (Actually, choice between two alternatives by simple plurality doesn't have this last problem - but IIRC ALL other voting systems do.)

And more specifically, see http://forum.icann.org/election/395B12D400000003.h tml
for some more problems. Essentially it still gives you too little granularity in expressing your choice because you can only say "yes" or "no" to each candidate, rather than saying "I prefer X to Y to Z".

Dave

Cheers,
Ian

And none of them will allow a zone transfer (AXFR), so this entire thread is incorrect.

To actually get the com/net/org zone files, you have to sign and return this big nasty thing promising not to spam or otherwise abuse the data. After processing you are assigned a username and password with which you can FTP the zone files.

On this anniversary, let us not forgot one of the other fathers of the Internet, Dr. Vinton Cerf who co-created the TCP/IP protocol and was a major contributor to the invention of DNS. Dr. Cerf is currently Chairman of the Board of Directors at ICANN and Senior Vice President for Architecture and Technology at MCI®. So, Dr. Cerf, combined with Dr. Postel and Mr. Mockapetris, are the three fathers (or, father, mother, and uncle) of the Internet.

Best,
Doug

You know, it's just so hard to use Google.

Two clicks away from Google's results? That's too much to ask!

Hell, clicking these links is probably too much to ask.

Forgot to add that one of their members is on the board of directors at ICANN.

Tonny Yu, founder and CEO of Mailshell, says that any new and better replacement for SMTP would have to have some sort of certification system to guarantee that senders are who they say they are.

Try SMTP AUTH. Any respectable MTA implements it.

The other important requirement, according to Yu, is a system for tracking resource usage per sender. Basically this means that profiles should be established for normal amounts of mail sending from different types of users. If you limited normal users to 100 messages per second and major companies to 10,000 messages a second it would be hard for legitimate users to complain, but spamming would be much harder.

This would take a centralized authority -- without one, enforcement is left to the commons, and we all know what happens then.

I'm sure we'd have no trouble finding a decent, well-respected, centralized authority to control all of the world's email. After all, no one has any cause to complain about the Internet's existing centralized authorities!

Comments concerning the layout, construction and functionality of this site
should be sent to webmaster@icann.org.

Why don't you drop 'im a line, then. ;-]

...but this story is crud on so many levels.

• 3FFE::/16 is the experimental 6bone space, where you try out allocation policies before settling on a real one. They've settled on a real one. Even better, it's the same in all three (er, four) regions. The 6bone's purpose is fulfilled , we're in production mode and, as was always intended, it's time to think about retiring it.
• How many times: IP address don't cost money. Sure, the RIRs charge for the service of allocation, and your ISP is entitled to charge for the services around them. They do their job pretty well, and with consensus of the community (a rarity in this day and age). Great as Bob Fink is, do you really want to continue trusting address allocation to one guy as a volunteer project?
• You get addresses from your ISP.
• You get addresses from your ISP.
• You get addresses from your ISP. There are loads of them. If you need them, you can have them. The expense is not in getting the damn addresses. "Experimental" does not mean "free". "Production" does not mean "business".
• AftanGustur: IPv6 is not a bastard protocol, routers don't need to fragment anymore, and the IETF is not working on a new damn protocol. You don't cite any sources, so I can't refute it. Please do.

Guys, there are a lot of misconceptions about IPv6. I appreciate this - it's not an intuitive subject, and it's possible to believe you know a lot more about it than you actually do. But, the details are there. Please do the reading and start asking your ISP for connectivity. No, your real ISP. There are people out there who want to deploy this, now, and we're waiting for customer demand. Go nuts!

Dave

Hell, they KEPT DOCUMENTS FROM THEIR OWN PRESIDENT, and he eventually quit.

Karl Auerbach was elected to the Board of Directors (At-Large Representative for Canada and the United States), he was not the president.

Karl did win his case with support from the EFF.

Stuart Lynn is President and CEO of ICANN. He is the one that is attempting to control ICANN through both day-to-day operations as President, and the Board as CEO. Stuart seems very intent in increases his power, and his domain of power, the role and responsibilities of ICANN.

I am miffed that IANA was assigned by the US Dept. of Commerce to ICANN, and not the Internet Society / Internet Engineering Taskforce (IETF)

Hell, they KEPT DOCUMENTS FROM THEIR OWN PRESIDENT, and he eventually quit.

Karl Auerbach was elected to the Board of Directors (At-Large Representative for Canada and the United States), he was not the president.

Karl did win his case with support from the EFF.

Stuart Lynn is President and CEO of ICANN. He is the one that is attempting to control ICANN through both day-to-day operations as President, and the Board as CEO. Stuart seems very intent in increases his power, and his domain of power, the role and responsibilities of ICANN.

I am miffed that IANA was assigned by the US Dept. of Commerce to ICANN, and not the Internet Society / Internet Engineering Taskforce (IETF)

Monthly Report (Oct 2002) for all ICANN registrars. Weird this /. article just made it because I was just reading this report. Shows a LOT of information about registrars, their SLAs, and even their registration statistics. Of course, Netsol, Tucows, Enom, Bulkregister, and MelbourneIT are stompin', but it will be interesting to track Amazon's progress since they're starting from scratch.

The only way Microsoft could have a remote chance to make a EULA binding would be...

Click-through EULA's have been found to be entirely enforcable - see Specht v. Netscape/AOL. In this case, the license was found to be unenforcable, but only because the user didn't have to click on "I agree" or something similar before installing the software. The decision says "The primary purpose of downloading is to obtain a product, not to assent to an agreement. In contrast, clicking on an icon stating "I assent" has no meaning or purpose other than to indicate such assent. Netscape's failure to require users of SmartDownload to indicate assent to its license as a precondition to downloading and using its software is fatal to its argument that a contract has been formed." Also see Register.COM v. Verio, Inc. where a "by submitting a query, you agree to the terms of this license" clause was found enforcable. In the case of the Windows XP license, you have to click the "I Agree" button before installing, making whatever terms are in the EULA enforceable according to either of these decisions.

This was in the dark ages, when a popular top level domains was upkept by someone using a "vi" and who was rejecting domain names he disliked.

But I've heard they've upgraded to Windows Notepad.

this page simply says "GET BENT" in 72pt type?

He's still listed on ICANN's website. Is he no longer a board member? When did this happen? Do you have a link?

Formed in October 1998, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a non-profit, private-sector corporation formed by a broad coalition of the Internet's business, technical, academic, and user communities. ICANN has been recognized by the U.S. and other governments as the global consensus entity to coordinate the technical management of the Internet's domain name system, the allocation of IP address space, the assignment of protocol parameters, and the management of the root server system.

As a technical coordinating body, ICANN's mandate is not to "run the Internet." Rather, it is to oversee the management of only those specific technical managerial and policy development tasks that require central coordination: the assignment of the Internet's unique name and number identifiers.

Formed in October 1998, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a non-profit, private-sector corporation formed by a broad coalition of the Internet's business, technical, academic, and user communities. ICANN has been recognized by the U.S. and other governments as the global consensus entity to coordinate the technical management of the Internet's domain name system, the allocation of IP address space, the assignment of protocol parameters, and the management of the root server system.

As a technical coordinating body, ICANN's mandate is not to "run the Internet." Rather, it is to oversee the management of only those specific technical managerial and policy development tasks that require central coordination: the assignment of the Internet's unique name and number identifiers.

Reading through the proposals I note that they suggest eliminating a number of directorships, not just the At Large directors. The proposals call for shifting the functions of the At Large directors to an At Large advisory committee and a Manager of Public Participation. There are a bunch of other suggestions on reform, et. al. in the documents, feel free to have a look on your own if you're interested in the nuts and bolts of the ICANN organizational process.

Finally, I don't personally know Allerbach and I can't say one way or the other if his departure from the ICANN Board of Directors is appropriate or not. He may be a stark raving nutcase for all I know, or he may be the last voice of reason and integrity in the organization, who knows? Not me. I can however guarantee that suing the organization, regardless of the reasons he did so, was unlikely to win him any friends on the board. After that, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to anyone that ICANN wants to close-up the ranks of their Board of Directors and avoid this type of public embarrassment in the future. But I think it's inaccurate to claim that ICANN forced him out, there's nothing to substantiate that.

Whatever the reasons, I wish him luck in the future and hope that he will continue his efforts to keep ICANN accountable for their policies and actions and keep the process open to public comment and criticism. God knows they need someone to hold them accountable.

Reading through the proposals I note that they suggest eliminating a number of directorships, not just the At Large directors. The proposals call for shifting the functions of the At Large directors to an At Large advisory committee and a Manager of Public Participation. There are a bunch of other suggestions on reform, et. al. in the documents, feel free to have a look on your own if you're interested in the nuts and bolts of the ICANN organizational process.

Finally, I don't personally know Allerbach and I can't say one way or the other if his departure from the ICANN Board of Directors is appropriate or not. He may be a stark raving nutcase for all I know, or he may be the last voice of reason and integrity in the organization, who knows? Not me. I can however guarantee that suing the organization, regardless of the reasons he did so, was unlikely to win him any friends on the board. After that, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to anyone that ICANN wants to close-up the ranks of their Board of Directors and avoid this type of public embarrassment in the future. But I think it's inaccurate to claim that ICANN forced him out, there's nothing to substantiate that.

Whatever the reasons, I wish him luck in the future and hope that he will continue his efforts to keep ICANN accountable for their policies and actions and keep the process open to public comment and criticism. God knows they need someone to hold them accountable.

So it seems that those of us who sell PostgreSQL to client will have an easy answer for whether or not it can scale.

talli

My sister is probably the one who pressed these charges. She does work for Nintendo, taking away copyright-infringing domain names and giving them back to the owners of the copyright. While I don't think a corporation should be given a .org domain name, you have to understand that the majority of sites squatting on a brand name (or misspelling thereof) forward to pornography. Search for pokemon on ICANN: you'll see exactly what I'm talking about.

The IETF is an amazingly transparent organization that has consistently "delivered the goods" with almost no back-room politics. ICANN is its exact opposite, perhaps reaching a nadir when one of its own board members had to sue to see the financial records. Why doesn't ICANN operate in a completely transparent manner? Do you feel the slightest bit uncomfortable with its policies and procedures? Given your background, Welch's comments in the McCarthy Army hearings come to mind.

Do you know runs ICANN?

what law is it breaking to have incorrect data?

Breach of Contract.

When a registrar signs up with ICANN, they sign a binding contract. Whether or not you agree with the contract, it is a binding contract. Below is an excerpt:

3.7.7.1 The Registered Name Holder shall provide to Registrar accurate and reliable contact details and promptly correct and update them during the term of the Registered Name registration, including: the full name, postal address, e-mail address, voice telephone number, and fax number if available of the Registered Name Holder; name of authorized person for contact purposes in the case of an Registered Name Holder that is an organization, association, or corporation; and the data elements listed in Subsections 3.3.1.2, 3.3.1.7 and 3.3.1.8.

source

The press release ICANN sent out can be found here. It looks like the article was written straight from this with a reaction from VeriSign, which just muddled the real issue.

The problem isn't that VeriSign has incorrect information in the WHOIS database, it is that it makes no effort to correct that information. They have been notified to correct several records and they haven't. And in one case, VeriSign told a registrant to put in an incorrect address.

No, they aren't breaking the law, but they are breaking their contract with ICANN and so ICANN is enforcing that contract. And this isn't a personal privacy issue; that is completely separate from VeriSign not updating WHOIS records when requested and telling customers to give false information. Please, no more pity posts for VeriSign!

http://www.icann.org/correspondence/touton-letter- to-beckwith-03sep02.htm

Cites the 17 broken entries.

first, an aside...

the sad thing is that ANY corporation will sink to the same levels through the sheer pressures of capitalism.

Untrue. Corporations will sink to this level through the immorality and lack of accountability of the people that run them. Capitalism does not imply immorality. The two are completely unrelated concepts.

Second, a quick point, non-profits need less revenue because they strictly cover their economic costs. Level of profit or revenue does not imply anything about the quality of service. Anyway, it's irrelevant in this case since presumably the initial demand and revenue for either non-profits or for-profits will be the same.

Last, some opinions on who should run dot-org:

get some people in there who will keep on doing their job no matter what the stock market / investors / board of directors say. Note that above all three groups are interlinked. . . . one goes to shit and bye bye goes the rest of them.

Again, not quite true. The only things intrinsically linked in our market economy are buyers and sellers. One produces a good or service, the other consumes it. So in this case, it shouldn't really matter who provides the service in question (management of the dot-org registry), so long as they are able to provide said service to consumers.

Now, their policies will dictate what kind of service they provide, which is where we see advantages for choosing non-profits. Non-profits have no use for additional revenue once they have satisfied their economic costs (much in the way a firm running in a perfectly competetive market will operate at zero economic profit). This provides non-profits with the incentives to do two things:

1. Reinvest excess revenue back into the capital equipment of the service they are providing (managing dot-org)
2. Lowering prices, making their service much more attractive and affordable to the huge number of consumers in this market. Considering the democratic nature of the internet (and dot-org), I personally think this is important, as it lowers the barriers to entry into the internet namespace.

If you are familiar with the applications, you'll notice that this is the position of the IMS/ISC proposal. This is probably one of the most important points, besides technical implementation (which IMS/ISC also seems very strong on; heck, they run a root server, maintain BIND and DHCP, and have the grit to make all their code Open Source and publically accountable). This point of where the money goes is important because when the money starts going toward corporate pockets and non-profit programs, you can bet you won't see your better service, lower prices, and lower barriers to entry in the future.

Two additional points:

• Funding non-profit programs (such as ISOC's) are important, sure. But I say let me keep the extra money from my dot-org beyond what it costs to maintain it, and I'll donate individually if I want to.
• ICANN and the current status-quo insiders must be discouraged. The provider of dot-org services must be fully responsible to its consumers alone, not its vested interests in the perpetrators of the current DNS-profiteering mess.

first, an aside...

the sad thing is that ANY corporation will sink to the same levels through the sheer pressures of capitalism.

Untrue. Corporations will sink to this level through the immorality and lack of accountability of the people that run them. Capitalism does not imply immorality. The two are completely unrelated concepts.

Second, a quick point, non-profits need less revenue because they strictly cover their economic costs. Level of profit or revenue does not imply anything about the quality of service. Anyway, it's irrelevant in this case since presumably the initial demand and revenue for either non-profits or for-profits will be the same.

Last, some opinions on who should run dot-org:

get some people in there who will keep on doing their job no matter what the stock market / investors / board of directors say. Note that above all three groups are interlinked. . . . one goes to shit and bye bye goes the rest of them.

Again, not quite true. The only things intrinsically linked in our market economy are buyers and sellers. One produces a good or service, the other consumes it. So in this case, it shouldn't really matter who provides the service in question (management of the dot-org registry), so long as they are able to provide said service to consumers.

Now, their policies will dictate what kind of service they provide, which is where we see advantages for choosing non-profits. Non-profits have no use for additional revenue once they have satisfied their economic costs (much in the way a firm running in a perfectly competetive market will operate at zero economic profit). This provides non-profits with the incentives to do two things:

1. Reinvest excess revenue back into the capital equipment of the service they are providing (managing dot-org)
2. Lowering prices, making their service much more attractive and affordable to the huge number of consumers in this market. Considering the democratic nature of the internet (and dot-org), I personally think this is important, as it lowers the barriers to entry into the internet namespace.

If you are familiar with the applications, you'll notice that this is the position of the IMS/ISC proposal. This is probably one of the most important points, besides technical implementation (which IMS/ISC also seems very strong on; heck, they run a root server, maintain BIND and DHCP, and have the grit to make all their code Open Source and publically accountable). This point of where the money goes is important because when the money starts going toward corporate pockets and non-profit programs, you can bet you won't see your better service, lower prices, and lower barriers to entry in the future.

Two additional points:

• Funding non-profit programs (such as ISOC's) are important, sure. But I say let me keep the extra money from my dot-org beyond what it costs to maintain it, and I'll donate individually if I want to.
• ICANN and the current status-quo insiders must be discouraged. The provider of dot-org services must be fully responsible to its consumers alone, not its vested interests in the perpetrators of the current DNS-profiteering mess.

This is the ICANN evaluation. It shows why they did and who they looked at. Good reading. Seems above board to me.

Lonely Sig Alert: http://www.compunotes.com

Actually, that's probably an underestimate, more like $70 per domain.
Network solutions was the only registrar up until late 1999, almost 2000.
See. History of the Shared Registration System.

In the early stages of the shared registration system, there weren't many bargains like there are today.
As I recall, NS only offered two year initial registrations ($70) and yearly renewals ($35yr).
Two year initial registrations placed in 1999 expired in 2001.

So your really looking $70*15m or 1 Billion+.. Even more bear money!!

We're all glad HP backed down, but what scares me is that the "Responsible Disclosure" FUD continues. On Bugtraq people write that CERT and SecurtyFocus are "established parties" and everyone who does not give them their so-called "0days" is irresponsible (at least CERT is known to sell 0days). I personally won't give them my 0days early.

The "Responsible Disclosure" draft continues to get advertised, though it was not approved by the IETF .

Why do people think about giving away the right of free speech just because of some FUD?

Even in the unlikely case if this bad RFC passes, does it mean that that people are safer when they disclose problems - I definitely don't think so personally.

So the facts are: some companies can't write secure code, and it is more expensive to write code securely.

Just check "Help -> About" on Windows before using the word "responsibility".

The easiest solution is to shoot the messenger and to outlaw saying the emperor has no clothes. But this won't fix the problem in the real world. Such regulations will only alienate a lot of people and will make things worse.

Sorry, I forgot to include it in my submission. Here it is.

And, unfortunately, pay for the privilege. Accepting a single arbitrator costs the domain name holder nothing; asking for a panel requires that he or she pay for half the cost--- win or lose.

This does even out the economic incentives somewhat. But even so, the UDRP provides choice of arbitrator to the complaintant, so market forces favor those arbitrators who tend to return pro-complaintant decisions. (I'm not suggesting any deliberate corruption, just magnification of any differences which naturally occur.)

On a side note, does the date of the trademark in relation to the registration date of the domain have any correlation then?

Read the UDRP, version 19991024, and the resolution rules. An action in bad faith, such as reverse domain name hijacking, will be thrown out.

What's to stop me from trademarking the name after the fact and petitioning for ownership of the related domain names?

You run a risk that such action would be considered reverse hijacking, defined as "using the Policy in bad faith to attempt to deprive a registered domain-name holder of a domain name" (Resolution Rules) (emphasis by yerricde).

Ludacris

On a side note, does the date of the trademark in relation to the registration date of the domain have any correlation then?

Read the UDRP, version 19991024, and the resolution rules. An action in bad faith, such as reverse domain name hijacking, will be thrown out.

What's to stop me from trademarking the name after the fact and petitioning for ownership of the related domain names?

You run a risk that such action would be considered reverse hijacking, defined as "using the Policy in bad faith to attempt to deprive a registered domain-name holder of a domain name" (Resolution Rules) (emphasis by yerricde).

Ludacris

ICANN sends out a letter like this, hitting up the TLD Registries to drop some cash in their sacred offering plate.

Their efforts (for 2000, at least) appear to be halfway successful!

TO ICANN LAWYERS - JONES, DAY, REAVIS & POGUE

Why do ICANN stick with Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue? Is it because of certain old ICANN links with them? Are JDRP profiteering? They are very costly - have ICANN looked for other Law firms?

Have you checked out JDRP.com - and their people involvement with ICANN?

A quote from a Karl Auerbach:

Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue is ICANN's law firm, and has been so since the day of ICANN's birth. Indeed Jones-Day actually performed the incorporation ceremony in its Los Angeles offices.

Jones, Day, in the person of its principle man-on-the-ICANN-scene, Joe Sims, was present for at least half a year before ICANN was born, working in the shadows, responding to unknown interests and possibly making unknown deals. About all we know about that period is that those who were not insiders to Joe Sims process were ignored and that those who objected were treated with condescension and abuse.

Over the life of ICANN, Jones, Day has been the the dominant creditor of ICANN.

Even now Jones, Day continues to receive a lion's share of every dollar that flows into ICANN.

And one of Jones, Day's partners, Louis Touton, left the firm to become ICANN's Vice-President, Secretary, and General Counsel.

There is in my mind a question about the appearance of propriety.

Karls platform.

***End quote.

In a good two month period, October and November 2000, they got $465,553.67 from ICANN.

ICANN minutes.

As it one of the largest intellectual property practice groups in a general-practice law firm - with more than 85 intellectual property lawyers, I would imagine Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue make a lot of money on trademarks problems on the Internet.

Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue.

Virtually every word is trademarked, be it Alpha to Omega or Aardvark to Zulu - even common words you learnt with your A B C's - apple, ball and cat - most many times over.

MOST share the same words or initials with MANY others in a different business and/or country. For example, the World Trade Organization (WTO) shares its initials with six trademarks - U.S. alone (please check). Conflict is IMPOSSIBLE to avoid.

The solution to this problem has been ratified by experts - so that ALL registered trademarks can be identified on the Internet.

Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue know this solution.

They would lose a lot of money, if there was less trademark problems on the Internet - wouldn't they?

Draw your own conclusions - but it is my opinion they do not want the solution to 'consumer confusion', 'trademark conflict' and 'passing off' problems on the Internet.

There is in my mind certainly no question about the appearance of corruption - it is beyond doubt.

Please visit WIPO.org.uk to see. No connection with the United Nations WIPO.org.

Of course, if an appeal allows them to delay revealing anything interesting until Auerbach is out of office, they will have won.

For those of you just tuning in, Auerbach was elected to the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) board in November 2000 by the public at large. According to a Salon primer, ICANN "had already earned a reputation for ineptitude and closed-door policies that favor corporate interests. ... Auerbach intended to guide ICANN toward reform." He requested access to the financial records, he says, "[T]o find out where the money goes. Why does it take $2.4 million (47 applicants paid $50,000 each) to evaluate seven top-level domains?" As a director, according to California law, he was entitled to "the absolute right at any reasonable time to inspect and copy all books, records and documents of every kind," but ICANN thought otherwise, and the suit whose outcome is the topic of this story followed.