Eugene Kashpureff, founder of the AlterNic alternative domain name registry is not likely to be operating in that business for quite some time following his sentencing last week in Brooklyn federal court to two year’s probation. However Jason Henedeles, who financed the AlterNic operations towards the end, is set to scoop up what remains in terms of AlterNic assets and make a bid for a slice of the domain name registry business that is set to open up to competition come October 1. The AlterNic was founded back in March 1996 by Kashpureff as a forum for registries to advertise their top-level domains, as an alternative to the InterNic, which is where names in the popular .com, .net and .org name spaces are registered and which is run at present by Herndon, Virginia-based Network Solutions Inc, under a cooperative agreement signed with the US government in October 1992, which came to effect the following year. The idea was, if the names were not going to be allowed into the InterNic root, to establish a rival network of root servers around the world so web sites using the alternative domains could be accessed. However, in July 1997, in part out of frustration with the inability to have any of its TLDs added to the root, Kashpureff hacked into the InterNic site and re-directed all the traffic to AlterNic for five days. Kashpureff apologized and settled out of court with NSI. However, someone reported the crime to the FBI, who issued a warrant for his arrest and eventually got their man. Come October 1 the five and a half-year monopoly of will be over and other companies will be able to register domains in .com, .net and .org and possibly add other top-level domains to the root. Jason Hendeles runs a Toronto domain name registry, Skyman Enterprises Inc and supported the AlterNic with tools and equipment. Another of his companies, Skyscape Communications Inc was one of the companies hoping to register names such as .art, .film and .sex through AlterNic – the names are still on the web site today. The AlterNic held the intellectual property for 13 of these names, including .xxx and .med, but some of them were apparently sold to others, so it was difficult to ascertain who actually owned them, said Hendeles. Hendeles set up a debt plan to finance the AlterNic and lent Kashpureff equipment, but when things went wrong, he called in the debt. Following a judgement in his favor in Seattle, Washington in the spring, Hendeles is now trying to get a settlement, which he admits, is a little bit trickier. The only real asset of Kashpureff’s holding company A Towing Company Inc is the intellectual property associated with the domain names. Hendeles has registered the 13 names as trademarks and now the names are in the contest period that all trademarks have to go through before being allocated, which is why Hendeles is reluctant to divulge any of them apart from .xxx and .med. He has also filed for a trademark on the AlterNic.net domain name. Thus far he has been awarded two of the names, but expects the rest to come through in the next few months. After that he could use them or sell them off, but it is pretty sure that some of them will form the basis for his new registry and registrar website, which could go under the name Canadian Network Information Center (CNIC), or a less country-specific name – he says he hasn’t decided yet. However, he says it will be up within a month. We could yet see the AlterNic rise again, but this time as just another registry in a competitive environment, rather than as a political platform.
