The "landrush" for new .info domains is exposing weaknesses in its registrar's infrastructure and already protest sites are sprouting up.

We've explained previously how the company that runs the new domain, Afilias, has tried to keep a huge number of pirate registrations quiet - leading to the resignation of one of its key members.

Now the system has been opened to the public, however, the flaws are becoming clear. Afilias has already had to shut down its registration system for eight hours due to its inability to deal with the number of requests on its "real-time" system.

We've been receiving frequent emails from people claiming their domains have been taken by people unentitled to them. But worse that this, a new stream of complaints centered on the landrush are coming in.

One reader said: "I registered about 12 domain names just after the Afilias .info system went online for real time registration. Yesterday, my domains had still not shown up in the whois service on the Afilias website. I called Afilias who told me the domain had not been registered, even though I registered them about 18 hours before."

There remains an enormous risk of multiple registrations - and this on top of thousands of illegal pirate registrations.

A protest site has already appeared at www.theinternetchallenge.com, promising to list ".info trademark claims that may be challenged" (it also includes its own solution to the problem - take note Afilias). Then in a quick review of registrars listed as affiliates on the official site, few appear to have written the .info option into their systems, causing you to have to hunt around for ones that have.

The first top-level domain to be released since the initial Internet set-up is rapidly becoming a farce. ®

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