CircleID

Tom, I respect you immensely for coming out with some public responses to the community on these issues.

Because of the broad reach of the message about second level domain names being available under .pro through Encirca.biz, not everyone who may read this may be skilled in the art interpreting of what you mean by 'two credentials'.

This, in essence means that it is necessary for the use and operation of meatball.pro to be supported by two credentialed third level .pro registrants, correct?

Jothan,

Maybe an example would help:

In order for meatball.pro to resolve, it needs to be associated with two third level domains in different professions.

For example:
sauce.cpa.pro and pasta.eng.pro could qualify.
These two domains will resolve only after professional credentials have been verified in each respective profession.

The association is made by comparing the registrant id of the three domains.

Then meatball.pro would resolve.

Tom

First, I'd like to applaud CircleID for having the integrity to provide a fair and open forum for the internet community. Second, I'd like to commend Mr. Barrett on his remarks concerning the spirit of PRO. I might go a step further in suggesting that whatever the spirit of PRO may turn out to be, it would not be served by allowing PRO to be run into the ground. Thank you, Mr. Barrett, for having the strength and courage to think outside the box. You have potentially saved the investments of many hardworking individuals around the world and performed a great service for the internet community at large.

Michael J. Silver, Esq.

I would personally like to thank Tom Barrett for being as agressive as he has been trying to explain Encirca's ProForwarding service.  Many people would like to see Encirca's new service fail, and for the life of me I do not understand why.  Yes, you can disagree with a new concept, but to go out of your way to "kill it" without discussion is a bad idea.

Some predictions for .pro

1. In response to ICANN's request to admend the contract, RegistryPro will say "no thanks"

2. A year will pass and ICANN will finally agree to remove the restrictions on second level .pro to "foster competition" and "offer consumers and businesses another option for the internet"

Let's move on.

Tom,
I support your views.  Innovation and good service is key. 

Ten years ago, Network Solutions violated the spirit of the original gTLDs by dropping the ball on enforcing their intended purpose, leading to the current crazy-quilt where lots of nonprofits improperly use .com addresses.  Newer restricted TLDs were designed to avoid such problems by having well-defined purposes that were intended to actually be enforced, unlike the older TLDs.  What EnCirca is doing with .pro is violating the spirit of these rules, even if they manage by a technicality to be within the letter of them.

I see that EnCirca is actually threatening to sue a blogger who dared to write the truth about them:

http://blog.lextext.com/encircaletter.pdf

Apparently, freedom of speech and press are no more compatible with the agenda of this sinister company than the integrity of a restricted TLD.

Mr. Tobias,

With regard to your latter comment, wherein it would appear that you are posting as news comes in one end and thoughts leave the other, you should know that the blogger to whom you are making reference has resorted to censorship as means of swaying public opinion. That same blogger had also made some highly irresponsible comments apart from those cited in Encirca's letter that at best straddle the line between opinion and libel. I also must take issue with your use of the word sinister. Even if one were to accept some of your comments as being true, use of the word sinister would not be appropriate, is otherwise inflammatory, and only tends to undermine your credibility. In the future, you would best serve the public interest by speaking to matters in a more timely fashion and with more forethought. That said, I do commend you for not hiding behind an alias in the process of voicing a minority opinion. That is something which has been severely wanting in these discussions. We may not agree on PRO matters, but I do respect the hell out of that. I thank you.

Michael J. Silver, Esq. 

Tom:

Tom, You are an really out there dude.  You go ahead and allow someone to register f**k.pro knowing full well that the .pro domain is intended for lawyers.  Don't you see that this whole issue is going to be tied up in lawsuits for years.  I hope you realise that you're going to spend the next ten years in court fighing ever single atorney who registered a .pro domain!  And it's all your fault.