[cobalt-users] new.net, what a scam

[jale@xxxxxxxxxx]

Before Bulk Register continues to sell scam domains ... I ask, have you 
ever read this:

http://www.icann.org/icp/icp-3-background/response-to-new.net-09jul01.htm

If not, you should!!!!!!

Below is an excerpt - and I have no true love for ICANN, but I think they 
have VERY VALID points that reputable companies like Bulk Register should 
consider. New.net will get you in trouble over time, domain names will be 
lost. What would happen if .med became a REAL tld, everyone who bought a 
.med name is screwed - and new.net will do just what the article says, 
bitch and moan that they invented it.  I agree 100% with the assertion this 
is cyber-squatting and no reputable website owner should ever be putting up 
a web site manufactured through false representation (as this is not a 
tld), like new.net is doing.  TZO.com has been providing similar (but 
useful) service for years, new.net is just exploiting the convenience that 
tzo.com has been providing.

C. New.net's Business Model Bypasses the Community

It is helpful to be clear about New.net's business model. It hopes to be 
able to sign up consumers (many of whom will not understand the limited 
reach and effect of the New.net names) and then use that "marketplace 
success" to force ICANN to accept New.net as the operator for those TLD 
strings in the authoritative root. The strategy, no doubt, will involve 
encouraging all the name registrants in the New.net TLDs to send e-mails to 
ICANN pleading that their investment in that name will be wiped out if 
ICANN authorizes a different operator to manage a TLD with the same string. 
New.net will complain loudly to the press about the "monopolistic" ICANN 
attempting to crush its smaller competitors. This phenomenon has occurred 
before with other alternative root operators, who have claimed priority 
based on a first-come, first-served philosophy, and New.net apparently 
hopes to be able to stake out a similar claim for preference for the 30 
so-called TLD strings it is currently promoting and any it might promote in 
the future.

But consider the consequences if this approach were to become successful. 
What would prevent New.net or anyone else from establishing 1,000 or 
100,000 pseudo-TLDs, and thus claiming to have preempted all (or most) 
meaningful new TLD strings? The Internet community, working through the 
ICANN consensus development process, would then be faced with abandoning 
its effort - encouraged by a broad consensus of the global Internet 
community and by most of the world's governments - to manage the 
introduction of new TLDs for the benefit of the Internet community as a 
whole, and with accepting the claims of what would essentially be the TLD 
equivalent of cybersquating. New.net would have hijacked the community 
process by prempting the name space. New.net would in effect have used its 
financing to establish a private, for-profit monopoly over the TLD space, 
one that is operating outside of the public interest and without any 
community oversight.

New.net asserts in its paper that conflicts will not happen that allowing 
any entity to establish any TLD at any time for any reason would only 
rarely result in conflicting TLDs.8 That notion conflicts, however, with 
New.net's very existence and approach. For example, at least four of the 
TLDs it has established (.law, .travel, .xxx and .kids) already overlap 
with applications to ICANN for new TLD introductions. In fact, history 
shows us that the introduction by alternative root operators of conflicting 
TLDs - or at the very least, the introduction of new TLDs with the hope of 
preempting the use of that string by others9 is common.