There's a shocking new development in the wooot.com case. Here's the article I just submitted at CircleID (and circulated to some of the bloggers):
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In a previous CircleID article,
http://www.circleid.com/posts/20100423_naf_copying_pasting_nonsense_into_udrp_decisions/
it was discovered and documented that NAF Panelists and Complainants were systematically copying/pasting nonsense into UDRP decisions.
It has been a couple of months with no action by ICANN, and no public statement by NAF. In a shocking new development, though, it turns out that NAF has quietly
edited a past UDRP decision!
As we previously discussed, and as was independently documented on DomainNameWire,
http://domainnamewire.com/2010/04/23/seriously-wooot-the-hell/
the wooot.com decision used to contain the following line:
Complainant held a trademark registration for âAOLâ and Respondent registered the domain name âiaol.comâ.
This was completely out of place and nonsensical, because the complainant was Woot, not AOL, and iaol.com was a reference to a completely different case in 2002. This was the original "smoking gun" that caused the public to dig further into other cases of "cut/paste" amongst panelists. An archive of the original decision (cached on April 22, 2010) was made at Webcitation.
http://www.webcitation.org/5pBxVRsPU
It turns out that this was not the end of the story. I visited the wooot.com UDRP decision
http://domains.adrforum.com/domains/decisions/1312536.htm
this morning, nearly 2 months later, and found that someone had
completely removed the above "smoking gun" sentence from the posted decision. One can view a new Webcitation archive (cached on June 22, 2010)
http://www.webcitation.org/5qWs0V5L8
which shows the edited decision. The prior decision was dated April 22, 2010 (at the bottom). This new edited version is now dated April 23, 2010.
I believe that this is
unprecedented. There is no audit trail or reference to the prior decision, no history of revisions at the NAF website. There is no explanation offered by NAF or the panelist. Judge Diaz is also continuing to serve as a panelist (note the appointment date of that panel was May 5, 2010, mere weeks after the wooot.com decision).
http://domains.adrforum.com/domains/decisions/1317317.htm
It is also very alarming that ICANN's Board deferred making any decision about bringing UDRP providers under contract in their most recent meeting.
http://www.icann.org/en/minutes/prelim-report-22apr10-en.htm
Indeed, the issue is not even on the agenda for the Brussels meeting.
http://www.icann.org/en/minutes/agenda-25jun10-en.htm
The public deserves answers, not quiet revisions to history. NAF has been heavily criticized in the past. I believe this latest incident calls into serious question whether NAF can continue being a UDRP provider.
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Is this the end for NAF??!!??
---------- Post added at 10:25 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:45 AM ----------
Here we go, live on CircleID:
http://www.circleid.com/posts/naf_caught_revising_past_udrp_decisions/
