Govinda Leopold
Interview with Govinda Leopold

Maui Tech: I'd like to introduce Mrs. Govinda Leopold. Govinda Leopold is the CEO of 1stDomain.Net,
an accredited Icann domain registrar, and shareholder of Afilias Limited, the registry for .info names.
Govinda Leopold also used to be board member of Afilias. I met Govinda Leopold at lunch at Stella Blues.

Let us start with a question on my mind: How important are domain names?

Govinda Leopold: They are important as a marketing and branding tool on the Internet. Yet if there is no
unique content, a domain name in itself is less valuable, unless used as advertising space. Even then it needs to
generate traffic. So each domain needs a business plan and marketing effort besides just registering the name itself. Same as with any regular company.

Maui Tech: What about generic names?

Govinda Leopold: Well I would say the same applies. There will be Internet users entering a domain like
books.com in their browser, so that would translate into some 'free advertising' just by using the generic name.
But compare this to companies like amazon.com that actually promote their domain and have a unique business plan.

Maui Tech: So why did people grab all these generic domains at the startup of the .info registry?

Govinda Leopold: Some people hope to generate a website with a lot of traffic. They might use
the sites as adveristing space. Others try to sell the domain name to someone who might use it in a productive way. Generic names tend to have a higher value in resale of domains.

Maui Tech: You talked about maui.info earlier, what happened there?

Govinda Leopold: The .info registry opened in phases. In phase one, only trademarked names were to be accepted by database submission from accredited registrars to the .info registry. For this, registrars had to develop a new system, where domains applications would be written into a local registrar database containing trademark information.
Before going online, our technician tested the client web interface to make sure that all information
would be entered into our local database correctly. He used general names like maui.info, hawaii.info
through the test website with random trademark numbers like 12345 or 55555.

Maui Tech: Would those names not be rejected because the trademark information was invalid?

Govinda Leopold: The local database, as well as the .info registry database had no check for validation of the submitted information. That was just one of the things that went wrong.

Maui Tech: So were these names actually registered with that invalid information?

Govinda Leopold: Yes, they were processed at the .info registry and it took about a year before they were being removed, although we requested deletion right away.

Maui Tech: How did that happen?

Govinda Leopold: The error occurred at our end, at 1stdomain.net. Our technician marked the test domains with a status 'TEST' in the local database, so that they would not be submitted to the .info registry.
Some days prior to the opening of the .info registry, the technician tested the submission of our local database content to the .info registry within a registry sandbox/testing environment.
All went well, the return codes from the central .info database were now listed in our database,
and each domains had an internal flag 'SENT' in the status field; so that for consecutive sessions only domains with an empty status field would be submitted to the central registry, excluding the ones already marked as 'SENT'. After the test run, the technician set the status field back to null/empty for all domains, in order to submit them to the real central registry
upon opening. This is where the problem occurred: the 'TEST' domains were no longer flagged/marked
as such, the status field was now empty on all domains. So all names in our local database, including
the test domains, were submitted to the .info registry when they opened. Total about 10 domains including
maui.info, hawaii.info.

We realized the error right away and called Afilias, the .info registry asking to remove these test domains. They were not yet processed: the .info registry was to run a round robin to process domains in a random queue. We emailed, and sent a formal letter requesting deletion from their database via fax and Fedex, requesting and authorizing deletion of the test names before they would be processed.

Maui Tech: And they would not do that?

Govinda Leopold: Unfortunately, Afilias management decided that they did not want to touch/alter the database in any way in order to keep it 'integer', and therefore would/could not delete the names in question. Another registrar with a similar problem had contacted Afilias as well, and those names were also kept in the database.

On behalf of Afilias: it was the first start-up of new top level domains since the introduction of com/net/org/edu. Those grew over time... so this was a new experience. While I was a board member of Afilias at the time, the actual affairs were handled by management.

Maui Tech: Could you not have done something as a board member at Afilias?

Govinda Leopold: Personally, I still believe it would have been good practice to remove domain names from the
database upon notification of an error and a formal deletion request. At the least, these names could have been deleted right after the initial round of processing. Yet it was the Afilias management decision to stick to established policy and not handle exceptions that were not planned for. The board had no say in the active day-to-day management of Afilias. It was actually meant to prevent conflict of interest because all members of the board were also registrars; and it was agreed policy to not prefer Afilias members to other accredited registrars in any way.

Maui Tech: So what happened to those domains?

Govinda Leopold: The domains in question were set on registry-lock and only removed about a year later. Afilias did not allow immediate deletion of any of the submitted names. During the time they were listed, many Internet users became upset to see apparently invalid trademark information. And they certainly had a right to that, in addition it became obvious that not only mistakenly submitted names had been processed, but also a large number of fraudulent transactions.

Maui Tech: What about these names now, are maui.info and hawaii.info online?

Govinda Leopold: Last time I looked the websites were just displaying another domain name, so somebody has registered them but apparently is not using them. The major brand on the Internet remains to be .com, so most names are still being registered in this namespace, both new and resales.

Maui Tech: Well I better go and get my .com name then, after lunch.

Thank's, Govinda.

Govinda Leopold: Thank you.