March 2009 - At-Large - lists.icann.org

Open ALAC meeting in Mexico?
by Izumi AIZU March 1, 2009

March 1, 2009

Hi, I am trying to find any ALAC meeting, the committee meeting, which is open for public, including ALS and RALOs? Other than all Summit events and meeting with NCUC on Monday 6 pm and with the Board , I could not find one. Or there will be no ALAC meeting or no open meeting but all closed? Thanks for your help, izumi

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Registrar compliance
by Derek Smythe March 1, 2009

March 1, 2009

Ladies and Gentleman As you may or may not know, I am actively involved in regularly reporting scam domains with fake whois details to registrars, concentrating mainly on advance fee fraudsters. Many of the real perpetrators are known, these gangs have been busted theoretically except for their locality. Hours and hours are spent verifying facts before the first report goes off. While some registrars have been a pleasure to work with and are willing to enforce the RAA (thank you PublicDomainRegistry/DirectI, Enom and the others that abide by the RAA), I must admit I am utterly and thoroughly disgusted in some of the other registrars. To make matters worse, ICANN's wonderful WDPRS system does not work! If the registrar decides to ignore a report, so does ICANN. I have reported numerous domains recently where I really went out of my may to make sure the evidence was extremely conclusive. These domains survived the "WDPRS process" unchanged, also follow up reports. Yet where I challenged a bank to have their lawyers contact one such registrar where the registrar ignores my reports, copying the registrar as well, they could disable the fake HSBC domain within hours? Hello MelbourneIT? The other domains reported in the same batch remain online and actively scamming! This is by no means an isolated incident for MelbourneIT. When making ICANN aware of registrar issues and extreme violations of the RAA, also making them aware of ignored WDPRS reports, I have been given the cold shoulder. As such, why should RAA compliant registrars continue to abide by the RAA if the "world's largest domain name registrar" blatantly ignores the RAA? Why should the public waste time on a placebo called the WDPRS system? Systems do not enforce compliance, the willingness of the people behind the systems do! As such, in the only avenue left to me, I have published some pertinent facts online at a blog, http://www.badwhois.info/wp (I am adding more info on the reported domains soon), regarding the holding company of the "world's largest domain name registrar" and their attitude towards compliance. Yet their website sports an ICANN logo???? How can the ordinary internet user survive the new Internet where everybody wants to make rules, but nobody is willing to enforce them? I am sickened to the core by this so called system. I saw the Internet born, I make a living out of IT, helped build it, I am involved in Internet security, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to say I am proud of it. "Business on the Internet", "the promise of the Internet" etc have all become oxymorons. As an example, take a quick look at how many spoofs of one bank there has been that has been found - NatWest bank - http://db.aa419.org/fakebankslist.php?psearch=natwest - now try Barclays, Citi. Obviously these could be mistaken for UDRP issues, but are not. The legal title holders to these marks are not directly affected so don not defend against these actively, so the public is left to fend for themselves. LEAs will not and impossibly cannot shut down each one of these - they simply do not have sufficient resources. Anyway, why use the taxpayer's money to sort out a mess that started elsewhere, why not stop this at the core? Bogus whois details where a registrar refuses to do anything without court orders etc does not help when the RAA is blatantly ignored. Ordinary citizens are under attack, they are being scammed every day on the internet, they see the trash in their email boxes, their identities are stolen and further scam domains are registered with those self same details. Corporates are willing to accept this and self blind or hide behind other legalese (also private domain registrations), since it allows the money to flow in, yet the victims are the ordinary innocent citizens who do not understand how the system works (or does not work). The system is now devoid of reality and "decency" - but that is the OPM and OPP I refer to in my posting. Definitely no integrity and not working for the ordinary internet user. To date nobody can quantify the financial losses on the Internet due to scams. Small businesses, and not so small, cannot survive once scammers get involved and spoof them. They simply do not have the financial means. What happened to BuyerGuardian.com? What message is the registrar community and ICANN is sending out? With ICANN Mexico happening, I would appreciate it if some of the attendees could find out what chance a normal internet user has of using the "system" if I, who I believe am more knowledgeable on domain and RAA issues than the average internet user, can not get either the registrar, or failing that ICANN, to actually look at reports of serious breaches of the RAA. Currently they do not have a snowball's hope ... Derek Smythe

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Presentations at At-Large Summit
by Patrick Vande Walle March 1, 2009

March 1, 2009

I am being asked if and when the presentations given at the Summit meeting this Friday will be put on-line. Thanks Patrick

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