- YOU ARE RECEIVING THIS NEWSLETTER BECAUSE YOU ARE A DOMAIN OWNER WITH THE DOT.GOD REGISTRY, LIMITED.
A copy of this Newsletter is indexed at: http://www.dot-god.com/information/newsletter/newsletter-jan-24-2002.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------- dot.GOD network information centre and domain name registry Newsletter January 24th, 2002 1. Domain Owner Agreements 2. Our Position on ICANN 3. .GOD intellectual property rights defended 4. a new TLD a new experiment 1) Domain Owner Agreements: =========================== The Domain Owner Agreements are ready. You can review a copy of the licensing agreement by visiting: http://www.dot-god.com/fees/agreement/ .GOD and .SATAN domain owners should proceed to visit the Bill Payment Centre at: http://www.dot-god.com/payment-centre/ Our Bill Payment Centre will assist you in generating the invoice and agreements for all of your .GOD and .SATAN domains. You will be required to file one signed agreement per domain name. Please fill in the forms and follow the instructions provided. If you have lost your password please visit the following URL's to arrange to pickup a listing of your domain names and passwords. For .GOD domain owners please visit: http://secure.dot-god.com/cgi-bin/god.nic/lostpassword.cgi For .SATAN domain owners please visit: http://secure.dot-god.com/cgi-bin/satan.nic/lostpassword.cgi Domain agreements and payments must be filed with the registry by February 28, 2002. The dot.GOD Registry, Limited accepts payments in the form of checks or International Money Orders drawn on an American or Canadian bank. We also accept VISA and MasterCard through our reseller FAXCASH/National Debit Corporation. 2) Our Position on ICANN: ========================= ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) was established by the U.S. Department of Commerce to transfer the delegation of Internet names, addresses and numbers to the Internet Community. Unfortunately like most well meaning government initiatives ICANN has failed to meet its mandate. ICANN refuses to acknowledge the needs of the Internet Community and has instead opted to serve a select group of corporate masters and government interests such as AT&T, ITU (International Telecommunication Union), IBM, WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization), VeriSign etc. To this end ICANN has intentionally blocked the introduction of existing top level domains into the U.S. domain name system. Many participants in the top level domain industry have claimed ICANN is creating a false scarcity to ensure the continued popularity of the .com universe. In some cases ICANN has duplicated existing infrastructure and encouraged collision across root systems. This has resulted in fraud being perpetrated on Internet users who are buying infrastructure that does not exist. The dot.GOD Registry, Limited recently assisted a consumer protection agency of the United States Government in exposing over $80,000 USD in fraud perpetrated against U.S. citizens. The investigation continues. And that's not the end of it. We've had calls from bankers investigating credit card fraud. Consumers concerned about their purchases of domain names. Have they purchased valid domains? There's even a September 11th story where another fraud artist is selling domains that will never be recognized in any expanded root systems. He uses spam, tragedy and patriotism as a means of getting a sale. ICANN is now attempting to dump those directors who are independent representatives of the Internet Community. Soon ICANN will no longer be accountable to our domain owners through the ICANN@Large membership process. It is ICANN's intention to wind up the ICANN@Large membership. This is the only official ICANN body that allows our domain owners direct representation on the ICANN board through the election of @Large representatives. A number of the @Large directors have attempted to organize against this action to close the @Large. They have asked ICANN to provide them with access to the membership they represent. ICANN has responded to these requests by refusing access. There is more bad news on ICANN affecting a number of issues that concern us. But good news is always better then bad news. And the good news is that ICANN is irrelevant to the technical operation of the Internet. The problem is that most Internet users and Service Providers have no idea they have a choice to dump ICANN and in many cases an opportunity to participate in expanding Internet infrastructure. The solution here is education. And this process has started. In the year 2000 ICANN held a 95% market share in Internet name to address resolution. That means that approximately 95% of Internet users in 2000 were navigating the net using the ICANN/DOC root servers. Today ICANN's market share has dropped to 70%. That's significant and represents a lack of faith in the United States Government and it's promises to the Internet community. Today new root providers are popping up everywhere. China has it's own local root system. They abandoned ICANN back in January of 2001. A number of commercial providers appeared later in the year further eroding ICANN's existing share of the root system. In order to protect ourselves during this period of transition we have initiated the following actions: a) We have positioned ourselves in the marketplace by joining the Top Level Domain Association, which represents a number of top level domain operators outside the ICANN process. b) We appointed a Barrister Mr. Len Lindon to protect our intellectual property rights. c) We are initiating a marketing campaign this year oriented toward user and ISP awareness and education. d) We have abandoned the ICANN process and have given notice to the Commerce Secretary. See the following URL for our letter to Secretary Evans. http://www.dot-god.com/information/doc-jan-21-2002.html If you want to help us send us an email and we'll follow up with you with some suggestions. If you have an active domain in .GOD or .SATAN advertise it. Let people know we exist. You can also help in the fight to reform ICANN. If you are an ICANN@Large member then contact your director. Tell them you're an @Large member and ask them to keep you informed. Please only contact the director for your region. Region / Director URL ------------------------------------------------------------------- Africa Nii Narku Quaynor http://www.icann.org/biog/quaynor.htm Asia-Pacific Masanobu Katoh http://www.mkatoh.net/about/longbio.html Europe Andy Müller-Maguhn http://www.ccc.de/%7Eandy/ Latin America Caribbean Ivan Moura Campos http://www.icann.org/biog/campos.htm North America Karl Auerbach http://www.cavebear.com/cavebear/karl.html 3) .GOD intellectual property rights defended: ============================================== On January 7th, 2001 a Thomas Goolnick contacted the registry. He represented himself as the Marketing Director for TBS Industries Ltd. a United Kingdom corporation. Mr. Goolnick expressed an interest in purchasing a large quantity of .GOD domain names for UK Marketing. We advised Mr. Goolnick that we were not interested in UK representation. At the time the registry was still in Beta. Seven months later the registry was advised that someone in the United Kingdom was bulk emailing addresses harvested from newsgroups and web sites as part of a marketing effort to sell second level domains in .GOD. The registry investigated TLD Networks, a company registered in the Channel Islands which claimed exclusive rights to .GOD. We were able to trace this company to Mr. Goolnick and TBS Industries Ltd. Under the UK Patent Act we had the option of proceeding by means of criminal or civil action. We decided to instruct our Barrister to proceed by means of a criminal action. We felt we had sufficient proof that TBS Industries Ltd. and TLD Networks intentionally infringed on our intellectual property rights and as such felt a criminal action was appropriate under the circumstances. Just prior to filing the application we were contacted by TLD Networks lawyer who advised that they had discontinued selling .GOD domains. We are satisfied that TLD Networks is no longer infringing on our intellectual property rights and have abandoned our criminal action against them. A press release concerning this issue is indexed at: http://www.dot-god.com/communications/TLD_Networks_Ltd/public_announcement.html Please let us know if you find anyone infringing on our intellectual property in .GOD or .SATAN. 4) a new TLD a new experiment: ============================== We have another experiment we would like our domain owners to participate in. This is not a BETA or technical experiment. It is a social experiment which will hopefully assist us in determine the best means of transferring a registry to it's domain owners. If you visit our Domain Owner Agreement at the following URL: http://www.dot-god.com/fees/agreement/index.html#11.0 You will notice that the intellectual property rights holder in .GOD and .SATAN intends to transfer the registry to it's domain owners after one million domains are paid and registered. It is our position that a registry should ultimately be operated by those who it serves. Section 11.0 Subsection 2; The Licensor must transfer its intellectual property rights in the "INSERT GOD OR SATAN TLD HERE" Top Level Domain to the second level domain owners in that top level domain when total paid registrations in the TLD exceed one million domain names. You'll notice this part of the agreement says nothing about how it will happen. Frankly we have no idea nor is it our intention to impose a procedure on our domain owners. Instead we propose establishing a free TLD using our resources. Control of this TLD shall be immediately offered to it's registered domain owners. We will assist in setting up a virtual meeting place where those domain owners can organize. And we'll watch and see what happens. So far we have learned a lot from you our domain owners. The majority of you like your privacy. Something not available in most registries these days. But the domain name community heard the message. So were looking forward to providing this TLD facility and just seeing what happens and how people in cyberspace organize. If your interested send us some suggestions for a TLD name. Try not to duplicate existing namespace. You can use the tools available on our resource pages to find out if your suggestion is available. The Top Level Domain Finders are at the following URL: http://www.dot-god.com/resources/TLDF.html Regards The dot.GOD Registry, Limited http://www.dot-god.com/ ______________________________________________________________ Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 The dot.GOD Registry All Rights Reserved.
