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Mystery commenter targets M+M new gTLD clients

Kevin Murphy, September 4, 2012, 18:24:00 (UTC), Domain Registries

Having filed dozens of comments criticizing Top Level Domain Holdings’ financial acumen, someone calling himself Alexander Drummond-Willoughby has turned his attention to the company’s new gTLD clients.
Drummond-Willoughby has filed 82 comments with ICANN, until today all of them targeting TLDH’s own gTLD applications and all of them alleging some kind of unspecified financial irregularity.
But today he’s filed exactly the same allegations against applicants, such as BRS Media and the Fédération Internationale de Basketball, that have selected TLDH subsidiary Minds + Machines as their back-end registry services provider.
It’s a barely coherent argument, but the rub of it appears to be that TLDH has made a few bad financial bets, such as investing £180,000 in a potential .nyc applicant that failed to secure the support of New York City.
The source for Drummond-Willoughby’s information appears to be TLDH’s own regulatory filings — the company is listed on London’s Alternative Investment Market — and not exactly secret.
Drummond-Willoughby, for somebody who’s clued-in enough to know about the new gTLD program, has done a remarkably good job of keeping his name out of Google’s index and other search engines, leading to suspicions that it’s a pseudonym.
Here’s his comment on the FIBA bid for .basketball.
UPDATE: TLDH has provided the following statement:

TLDH / Minds + Machines is disappointed that ICANN is allowing individuals hiding behind fictional identities to make accusations against us and our clients that are baseless and may be legally actionable. TLDH, as a company listed on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange, is closely overseen by our Nominated Advisor, Beaumont Cornish, a firm licensed by the LSE to monitor our compliance with Exchange rules and applicable laws. The incoherent insinuations coming from these shadowy commenters are without merit and any charges that we have engaged in illegal or unethical activity are completely untrue. TLDH reserves all its rights and will ask ICANN to remove the comments and provide us with appropriate identifying information of these posters.


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Comments (1)

  1. Tom G says:

    Almost duplicate comments against TLDH applications from one ‘Elisa Giuliano’.
    https://gtldcomment.icann.org/comments-feedback/applicationcomment/commentdetails/6506
    When we going to see your Google .blog comment ?
    The comment venue is probably not appropriate to object to the closed registry applications. The only grounds might be limited public interest, and that would be a stretch.
    Personally, I think the more effective approach is to appeal to the GAC. But then, I believe the closed generic registry applications are already on their radar.

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