Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 01:31:38 -0500
To: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com>
From: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com>
Subject: Sex.tv, The .tv Corporation at Odds By Kathee Brewer
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From: "Kathee Brewer" <cat@avnonline.com>
To: "Matthew Gaylor" <freematt@coil.com>
Subject: Thought you might find this interesting.... [Note from Matt:  I do.]
Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 18:27:31 -0800

< http://www.avnonline.com/issues/200112/newsarchive/122001_lead.shtml >


adultvideonews.com 
avnlive.com 
  
Sex.tv, The .tv Corporation at Odds By Kathee Brewer

Dec. 20, 2001
LOS ANGELES - Amid accusations of contract breaches, fraudulent 
business practices, non-payment of debts, and defamation of 
character, Sex.tv Ltd., a British company that owns "several 
thousand" domain names ending in .tv, has hired attorney Charles 
Carreon to protect its rights in a brewing dispute with The .tv 
Corporation. Carreon is the attorney who represented Sex.com owner 
Gary Kremen in the epic court battle that eventually returned what 
has been called "the world's most valuable domain name" to Kremen 
after it was hijacked by Stephen Cohen.

Contacted in Canada on Wednesday, Oregon-based Carreon said Sex.tv 
Ltd. became concerned about its multi-year contract with The .tv 
Corporation after the company's president, Fintan O'Rourke, received 
an email message from The .tv Corporation Senior Director of Sales 
David J. Rosenbaum. In the email, dated 10 days before payment of the 
domain's second-year registration fee was due, Rosenbaum queried 
O'Rourke about his plans for the domain name, asking, "Are you 
planning to make full payment in time? Are you planning to breach the 
contract? I have someone else that wants the name, who can send money 
to arrive next week."

Jason Tucker, chief executive of Sex.tv Ltd., called the email 
extortion and said it seemed to confirm vague rumblings he and 
O'Rourke had been dismissing as rumor for some time. "Even before 
Fintan got the email, we were hearing from other people that .tv was 
trying to pre-sell the domain [in case we didn't pay]," he said. 
"More specifically, we heard they were going to take [the domain 
name] back at the end of the year to resell it for more money."

According to O'Rourke, if someone is in the wings to buy sex.tv, it 
wouldn't be the first time. He said The .tv Corporation has offered 
to sell it to someone else while his company held the contract. 
"There is significant evidence to prove they've been misrepresenting 
themselves and trying to sell the name starting three months into the 
contract," O'Rourke said. "I have the evidence that supports an offer 
to a German client for $1 million in May of this year."

Aviva Rosenthal, corporate communications senior manager for The .tv 
Corporation, said her company has done nothing illegal or unethical, 
and they don't expect Sex.tv Ltd.'s protestations to find a willing 
audience. "It's a non-issue," she said. "The bottom line is we can't 
pre-sell names; we don't pre-sell names. [Sex.tv Ltd.] is the 
registrant, and [the company] will continue to be the registrant as 
long as [it] follows the contract.

"The sex.tv domain name, like many other .tv domain names, draws a 
lot of interest, and it is common for us to receive inquiries on the 
most popular names from third parties," she said.

Carreon said his research into the issue has raised some troubling 
questions. For one thing, he said The .tv Corporation appeared not to 
be adhering to the CENTR Best Practice Guidelines for ccTLD Managers 
as outlined by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and 
Numbers. ccTLDs are Country Code Top Level Domain Name registries; 
The .tv Corporation is one of these by virtue of its contract with 
the kingdom of Tuvalu, a tiny island nation in the Pacific Ocean 
about midway between Honolulu, Hawaii, and Brisbane, Australia.

Among The .tv Corporation's alleged violations of the ccTLD Managers 
best practices guidelines are that it is not a resident of the 
territory to which the ccTLD belongs. According to records maintained 
by Network Solutions, The .tv Corporation's parent company, TLDs 
Inc., has corporate headquarters in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and 
technical offices in Los Angeles. All upper-level management of The 
.tv Corporation seems to be based in Los Angeles.

In addition, the best practices require ccTLD managers to do "a 
satisfactory job of supervising the operation of the DNS service for 
the TLD. Duties such as the assignment of domain names, delegation of 
sub-domains and operation of name servers must be done with technical 
competence." Carreon said the sex.tv domain "was not functional for 
quite some time" after it was purchased, apparently due to technical 
problems at The .tv Corporation. "The hosting problem was virtually 
insurmountable in Europe for quite a long time," he said, rendering 
sex.tv unreachable via the World Wide Web.

According to Carreon and O'Rourke, there also are indications that 
The .tv Corporation is not meeting its financial obligations to 
Tuvalu. O'Rourke said he has been in contact with the Tuvalan royal 
family about the matter. Essentially, Carreon said, ".tv is renting 
out cyberspace without paying its mortgage." The .tv Corporation 
denies the allegation.

O'Rourke also is upset with remarks he said a representative of The 
.tv Corporation made before a tribunal in an unrelated wrongful 
employment termination hearing earlier this year. "They said I was in 
'bad standing' with them," he said. "That's defamation of character. 
It's not true."

Perhaps chief among his complaints, he said, is the tone of the email 
he received from The .tv Corporation's Rosenbaum. O'Rourke perceived 
it as threatening: "At the end of the day," Rosenbaum wrote, "I have 
a revenue figure that I need to manage to [sic] and I don't really 
care where the money comes from. As you know, Sr. [sic] management 
will require termination of the agreement and cancellation of the 
domain if you breach the contract so if you are going to make 
payment, then please tell me so that I can keep Sr. [sic] management 
updated."
"I wasn't expecting it," O'Rourke said, noting that his company had 
given The .tv Corporation no reason to doubt that payment would be 
forthcoming under the deadline.

The .tv Corporation spokeswoman Rosenthal said O'Rourke 
misinterpreted the tone and intention of the email. She also said no 
one at her office had been contacted by anyone in the Sex.tv Ltd. 
camp about the matter.

Carreon said he left a voicemail message for Rosenbaum on Wednesday. 
Nothing has been filed at this point, he said; he just wants to talk.
"All I want to do is get my guys a fair shake," Carreon said. "Based 
on my experiences with Sex.com, I know that Internet domain names can 
be extremely valuable, and that Sex.tv will likely be one of the 
greats. It's a very ambitious venture that is being taken very 
seriously.
"Domain names are property, and property law applies in cyberspace," 
he said. "I choose cases based on their potential for setting 
groundbreaking precedent, and this case has tremendous potential."


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