PAB Spam or Scam?

["Robert F. Connelly" <rconnell@psi-japan.com>]

Bob Sharp and CORE Colleagues:

Bob Sharp has referred to me a FAX he received from "NIC, The Source for
.CC Domain Names".  It warns him that, though his client "Simul America,
Inc." holds "simul.com", someone else could take "simul.cc".

It advises him as follows: "For a limited time only, sumul.cc has been
reserved and pre-activated for your immediate use...".  The mailing
includes a convenient invoice which Bob can return to NIC (together with
US$100) to "prove up on" simul.cc:-{

I wasn't sure which ISO-3166 country is "CC", so I went to ITU's site at
the following URL:

	http://www.itu.int/net/cctlds/

Here it is:

 Cocos (Keeling) Islands - CC (CCK)
 Cocos (Keeling) Islands/Cocos (Keeling) (Iles)/Cocos (Keeling) (Islas) -
updated 12-Oct-98

          http://www.nic.cc/

          Island Internet Services, Telecom House 6799, Cocos Islands

          Administrative Contact: Thomas Anderson
          Island Internet Services, Telecom House, Cocos Keeling Islands 6799
          email: tanderson@nic.cc
          phone: +61 2 947 50013
          fax: +61 2 947 50014

          Technical Contact: Brian Cartmell
          1916 Pike Pl, #12-357, Seattle, WA 98101-1056, United States
          email: brc@nic.cc
          phone: +1 206 329 7900
          fax: +1 206 329 7107

          whois: http://rs.internic.net/cgi-bin/whois?cc24-dom

end quote:

I see that the Cocos Islands are about 7 degrees West of Christmas Island
on about the same latitude, a bit below the equator.  It is tied to
Australia and has country code 61 for international telephone calls.

Bob asks whether it is a scam.  If it were received by Email, I'd call it a
Spam.  I think it is a practice which should be discouraged.  Since Leni is
attending the WIPO Conference this Wednesday, I am sending him a copy of
Bob's FAX in .tiff format.  

The problem of ISO-3166 ccTLDs becoming de facto gTLDs has been raised as a
*major* concern at all three of the WIPO Consultations I attended.  I think
CORE should emphasise that there is little ICANN CAN do about this
practice.   However, *CORE* will_operate_under_ICANN_rules and, as such,
will be tied to the WIPO ACPs or such other "alternate domain name dispute
resolution" system that ICANN designates.

Regards,
BobC