Regarding panix.com

Mon Jan 17 02:20:10 UTC 2005

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 10:52:11 +1100
"Bruce Tonkin" <Bruce.Tonkin at melbourneit.com.au> wrote:

> In this case one of the parties was an ISP in the United Kingdom,
> which is a reseller of Melbourne IT.

I find it interesting that you assert that the ISP/reseller was in the
United Kingdom.  Our investigations established that the ISP appeared
to be in Ottawa, Canada: with various whois entries which, if believed,
would have placed them in Wilmington, Delaware, and/or Beckenham, Kent
and/or what looks like a mail forwarding service on the Isle of Man
(which is NOT part of the UK ...)

Where Registrars deal extensively through resellers, it is equally
important for those resellers to be as accessible and accountable as
the Registrar - and much of the difficulty in this case was caused by
the inability to identify exactly who and where the reseller was.

Not that the problem is in any way new - we encountered difficulties
(as an ISP) in contacting this same reseller, when trying to transfer
a domain for one of our clients, many months ago, and at the time
I wrote to your Melissa Fitzpatrick to convey my concern about the
non-contactability of the reseller - and also about the questionable
whois entries.

There was, of course, no meaningful reply, and I believe that if your
company had addressed this at the time in a more professional manner,
it is highly likely that most of the problems that were experienced
this past weekend could have been avoided.

-- 
Richard Cox