Rudi Vansnick wrote:

This is indeed hot stuff ... and perhaps the start of some special thoughts on how to tackle Registrar / Registrant contacts in order to catch domain squatting actions ...

To me this is just another example of policymaking through the courts and legal systems, as a way to bypass ICANN's glacial movement on the issue. If Dell's actions succeed, it wouldn't surprise me one bit if some future suit doesn't name ICANN as a co-plaintiff, for condoning the practice of tasting. When my organization first became an ALS, some of the more cynical of ICANN's end-user community -- most of whom are subscribers here -- warned me that the whole ALAC/RALO program was simply a cynical attempt by ICANN to claim legitimacy without really opening itself to the end-user community. Their argument suggested that ICANN is under pressure from groups such as the United Nations (or worse, WIPO) who claim they can balance the various competing interests better than ICANN can, and that the At-Large mechanism was bright in to demonstrate relevance (and to compensate for the elimination of directly-elected public board members). This lawsuit is IMO part of the ongoing challenge to ICANN's relevancy, and At-Large is one of ICANN's first lines of defense. It is completely relevant -- and within the realm of ALAC's mandate -- to determine public support for Dell's move and its potential to snowball. This is probably more important to ALAC's role within ICANN than the churning of a policy report. (As it is, such a report reflects the work of but a handful of people that claim to represent the interest of the public, but in reality is at best no more than a blind guess of public sentiment.) - Evan

IS this suit more about trademarks or tasting?

It's a trademark suit, but among the allegations is that they used tasting and kiting (repeated 4.999 day registrations) to hide their identity. I'm kind of surprised that the suit didn't name ICANN as an additional defendant. I did a short talk on tasting and kiting at MAAWG last month, and just from the stats that ICANN publishes, I pointed out these registars for their glaringly abusive behavior, registering millions of domains and refunding all but a few thousand of them. There's no question that ICANN knows what they've been doing. R's, John