IP: Afilias Deletes .Info Domain Names After Glitch

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> From: Richard Forno <rforno () infowarrior org>
> To: <farber () cis upenn edu>
>
>
> What torks me about Affilias is that beside their numerous technical
> hiccups, they had the audacity to print e-mail contact information in their
> public whois database for almost 3 weeks before I could change it. Thus, it
> was freely harvested by spammers and other 'marketing services' firms.
>
> Suffice it to say, one of my e-mail addys had HUGE amounts of spam sent to
> it shortly thereafter, and one of my clients' physcial addy was publicly
> avcailable as well. .... neither of us could modify that information shown
> to the public for SEVERAL WEEKS.
>
> If one could class-action sue Affilias (and the internet's domain regulating
> body, which shall remain nameless lest we anger their ex-President) for
> being incompetent and/or facilitating such an anti-consumer clusterfsck with
> names, I would sign up in a heartbeat......
>
> rf
>
>
> ----------
>
>
> Afilias Deletes .Info Domain Names After Glitch
> By Brian McWilliams, Newsbytes, 12/3/2001
> http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/172600.html
>
> A software glitch at the .info domain registry operated by Afilias
> briefly allowed scores of people to register Internet addresses that had
> fewer than the required three characters, the company confirmed today.
> Filters designed to prevent .info domain names with one or two
> characters from being registered were accidentally disabled for several
> hours Wednesday during a registry software upgrade, according to Roland
> LaPlante, chief marketing officer of Afilias, operator of the central
> database of .info domain names.
> Afilias has since deleted the 273 faulty registrations and instructed
> registrars to refund the affected customers, LaPlante said.
> The move has angered some registrants who were able to complete
> non-compliant .info registrations before the flaw was fixed.
> Dan O'Berry, a New York resident, said he successfully registered three
> such domain names - rx.info, md.info, and dr.info - through an
> Afilias-authorized registrar on Nov. 28.
> "These are my domains. They were open for registration, and I registered
> them," said O'Berry, who claimed he received e-mail confirmations from
> the registrar, which charged his credit card and placed his registration
> information in its look-up database.
> O'Berry said he registered the short .info domain names hoping to drive
> more traffic to his drug store site, drugstoreandmore.com, and was not
> aware at the time of the restriction against such short domain names
> specified in an agreement between the Internet Corporation for Assigned
> Names and Numbers (ICANN) and operators of several new top-level domain
> (TLD) registries including Afilias.
> That agreement specifies that single-character domain names in the new
> TLDs are to been "reserved" by the oversight group for unspecified
> reasons. In addition, the agreement states that all two-character names
> shall be "initially reserved" to prevent confusion with country codes.
> A list of frequently asked questions at the Afilias site states that
> .info domain names must be between three and 63 characters in length.
> O'Berry said he and other affected Afilias customers are considering
> legal action to retain their .info registrations.
> Eric Grimm, an attorney specializing in domain name law for CyberBrief,
> said he was not aware of legal precedents that have been set on the
> issue, but he said a court challenge could prove the registry's action
> was not legal.
> "The contracts of adhesion used by registrars are just crying out to be
> litigated because there are many clauses in there that may not hold up
> in court. It would be a tremendously interesting case," said Grimm.
> O'Berry's complaint is "kind of silly" according to ICANN director Karl
> Auerbach.
> "Mistakes happen, and I can't see that this guy was harmed by this. The
> law won't give him very much," said Auerbach.
> Still, Auerbach conceded that ICANN's restrictions against short domain
> names make little sense.
> "I think some of these reservations are totally arbitrary. I don't
> believe two-letter .info domains will cause confusion with country
> codes," said Auerbach, who added that there are no technical reasons why
> one or two character names should not be allowed.
> Since its launch last summer, Afilias registered 600,000 .info domain
> names, according to the company.
> Aflias is at http://www.afilias.info .
> ICANN's registry agreement is at
> http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/unsponsored/registry-agmt-appk-26apr01.
> htm
> .

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