Rs. 100 Crore Scam of .IN
By
Priyanka Rangarajan
Project Co-ordinator
Society for the Removal of Corruption
In one of the sessions of the Elitex organized by the Ministry of IT
a government official gave a presentation on the prestigious .IN
project and took all the credit for taking the .IN registration to a
figure of 1 lac. Following are some of the points that were covered
in the presentation which in fact are inspiration for my research and
findings.
.IN was earlier operated by CDAC – a government of India
department
which due to policy restrictions could only register 5000 domains.
So there was a need for policy change.
The policy for .IN Registry was made public in October 2004.
The work of .IN was given to the `National Internet Exchange of
India' which is a private association of Internet Service
Providers.
National Internet Exchange of India gave the work to Affilias – a
US
based company.
There was a Sunrise Policy of 90 days to protect the Trademark holders.
There is a Dispute Resolution Policy to resolve domain name dispute
on the format of WIPO and UDRP
.IN Domain registrations have crossed a figure of 1 Lac
.IN is such a hot topic being appreciated by one and all so I decided
to do some research and came out with the following SHOCKING facts.
There is no need to celebrate on the growth of .IN domain names. Its
again one of those sad stories of allowing foreigners to RAPE the
resources of Mother India for the greed of certain politicians and
government officers.
Once again the corrupt Indians have shown –
WE
ARE READY TO SELL ANYTHING TO FILL OUR POCKETS. But the irony is once
again they have been able to make it an opportunity to celebrate. And
the rest of Indian FOOLS are really celebrating over it.
The .IN domain registration in the CDAC (formerly NCST)
www.ncst.ernet.in era was restricted to only people who are Indian
citizens or are registered in India. According to sources in the
Department of IT who do not want to be named the policy was kept so
restrictive in order to protect the domain names from abuse. For
example SEX.IN will bring bad name to the country.
Moreover NCST
itself had the capability of taking the .IN Registrations much beyond
the 1 lac number had the policy been changed during its regime. See
for the CDAC policy http://www.indianregistry.net/coin/whocan.htm
The Government released a new .IN Policy dated 28.10.2004.
See Details http://www.dotindia.com/IN%20POLICY&IMPLEMENTATION-28-10-04.doc
The policy talks of several things which are incompatible with the
reality and were never followed. There are several discrepancies.
For example it says the .IN will be operated by INNIC which does not
exist anywhere instead it is being operated by private body -
National Internet Exchange of India..
According to the policy the
Trademark owners will be protected by giving them a period of 90 days
to apply before the general public. However in reality the Sunrise
time was from January 1 to January 21 that too without any publicity.
According to the policy names of cities will be reserved however upon
a WHOIS search on the .INRegistry site (www.registry.in) it is
revealed that almost all the city names like chennai , mumbai,
hyderabad are held by private individuals from Germany or US.
According to the policy only Indian ISPs are eligible to become
Registrars but in reality there are around 30 registrars none of whom
is an ISP and most of them are Multinational Companies.
The policy claims to reserve the Constitutional Authorities and Names
of Cities however in reality names like www.president.in ,
www.governmentofindia.in are being held by foreigners who in all
likelihood will misuse these names.
None of the Cities of India have
been protected. A search on Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, New Delhi
reveal that they are now the property of Foreign individuals.
NIXI (www.nixi.org) to whom the .IN work has been given is a private
association as against CDAC which was a government department. As
appears from its website NIXI does not have any resources and
employees of its own. The website mentions the address of the ISP
Association of India as NIXI's address. This private association
further subcontracted the work to a German company called Affilias
without any procedures or tendering. See
http://www.afilias.info/news/press_releases/pr_articles/2004-12-20-
01
No publicity or advertisements were made to make Registrars.
Many of
the prospective and current registrars revealed on the condition of
anonymity that NIXI is considering their applications only after
payment of liason fee which ranges from 2-3 lacs and that too only if
recommended by senior government officials.
The Dispute Resolution policy was not announced before the opening of
the .IN Registrations. Infact there is no Domain Name Resolution
Policy till the writing of this piece
Many companies that I have talked to are aggrieved about the fact
that their domains are pending Sunrise evaluation since last 4
months. And there is no outcome of their application.
There are several high profile domains which show the date of
registration well before the operations of .IN Registry started.
Like
www.tata.in was registered on 6th January 2005,
www.hclinfosystems was registered on 6th January
www.sun.in was registered on 27th January 2005
www.infosys.in was registered on 30th January 2005
www.wipro.in was registered on 4th February 2005
www.aajtak.in was registered on 6th January 2005
www.airtel.in was registered on 6th January 2005
www.reliance.in was registered on 6th January 2005
www.naukri.in was registered on 6th January 2005
Several high profile Indian domain names like hotel.in, city.in,
jobs.in, sex.in are up for sale and claim as much a price of as much
as $50,000 in the international market.
Almost all generic words and
International trademarks have been taken by people in Germany through
two German registrars InternetX GMBH (one of the directors of
Afilias ) and KeySystems.
For more info see
http://en.key-
systems.net/show_news.php#Thedemandfor.INDomainsisstillunbroken
See the list of Adult .IN domains up for sale
http://www.indomains.net/forsale.php?catid=2 and also
http://www.indomains.net/forsale.php
More than 7500 domains are listed for sale on this website
www.sedo.com . Do advance search for .IN extension.
Among other high
profile names you will find www.iskon.in ; isro.in, zipcodes.in up
for sale at 5000 pounds.
Most of the domains on this site were found
to be registered through German Registrars InternetX and Key Systems.
There has been huge domain name squatting in the .IN domains.
See
http://infotech.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1021158.cms .
All well
known trademark owners are being blackmailed by squatters to shell
out money in the absence of any Dispute Resolution Policy or anti
squatting law.
A WHOIS Search on the www.registry.in website
revealed the following contacts :
www.birla.in by Dot Name India Pvt. Ltd.
www.rediff.in by Abhishek Verma of Jaipur
www.nokia.in by Abhishek Verma of Jaipur
www.hinduja.in by Rickson Rodricks of Mumbai
www.hsbc.in by Hooman Esmail Zadeh of Germany
www.jayatv.in by someone in Dubai
www.jaya.in by someone in US.
Similary the names of Political leaders and Public figures like
Amitabh Bachan, Sonia Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi, Shahrukh Khan have been
taken away and have been put up for sale.
Points to be pondered upon
No one in the media is writing about the scam in .IN but instead
praising it as an achievement.
Has the Government bought over the
media by allotting them their domain names.
Why was a private entity given the work of operating .IN domains as
against CDAC which was doing well in the policy and mandate given to
it?
Is there no one in India who could have operated the .IN Registry or
was it a planned decision to give the work to Afilias – a German
company. Was there a tender floated ?
why were indian companies like
CMC, Infosys, TCS, CDAC, Ernet, STPI, WIPRO etc..etc..not asked to do
the work. Probably to allow the Germans and Americans to pickup the
premium domain names and reap gold.
.IN Domains have been sold by the Indian government for Rs. 500 which
are being sold at 50,000 dollars.
Could not have Indian government
auctioned these names to earn foreign currency for India. Even
the .US, .hk, .jp, .nl, .sg and .EURO and other country domains have
a policy to give the preference to their country's citizens so
why
did the Indian Government favored the Multinationals and allowed them
to make money from Indian sources. .JP of Japan is available for over
$ 60 US dollars and only to those having presence in Japan.
On the
contrary .IN is available to any foreigner for only US Dollar 10
without having to show any presence in India.
This is just waste of
Indian resources by politicians and bureaucrats who claim to be
taking India into the new IT liberalization era. It is a matter of
great concern to identify why these precious resources were given at
the cost of coal which are now being sold at the cost of Gold by
foreigners.
Is it not the rape of Indian resources once again by the
foreigners?
Why was the Sunrise period which was to be for 90 days was cut down
to 21 days and that too without letting the public know about it? Who benefitted such small sunrise period? Ofcourse The foreigners who
have squatted on the trademarks.
Why is there no Dispute Resolution Policy? Probably to allow this SATTA of selling domain names to go on?
Why is there no policy to tackle these blackmailers who are buying
domain names of trademark holders and selling them for huge
profits?
See more info on Cybersquatting
http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20040705/newsanalysis01.shtml
Who benefited from all this so called LIBERALISATION – the
Germans,
the Americans, the British and who lost its once again the Indian
Government and the Indian citizen.
By
Priyanka Rangarajan
Project Co-ordinator
Society for the Removal of Corruption
Let's make India Corruption free
(Ed:Reproduced from yahoo e-group with permission of the author)
