Brown called O'Brien some nasty names and challenged his competence as the CEO of Domainz, New Zealand's Internet domain name registry.

One of Brown's justifications for making such claims was the fiasco surrounding the commissioning, development and implementation of a new suite of registry software.

Unfortunately for Brown, he didn't "box smart", so even though some of his assertions in respect to Mr O'Brien may have had merit, he ultimately lost the case and was slapped with a huge judgement.

Readers Say (updated hourly) Nothing Yet Have Your Say

In the period since O'Brien departed Domainz, the defamation case wrapped up, and Brown left the country, an investigation has been undertaken and a report issued into that expensive and flaky software commissioned by O'Brien for the registry.

Based on this story, one can't help but wonder whether justice was really served when the courts penalised Brown so heavily for his comments.

The revelations of this report won't look good on O'Brien's Curriculum Vitae and it also makes the recent hissy-fit voiced by former ISOCNZ Chairman Jim Higgins appear even more churlish and vindictive.

It certainly seems that Higgins was at the very least "confused" and at worst telling giant porkies when he described the software in question as a "system which has been happily and very efficiently running the .nz domain for the past three years or so."

The report itself simply confirms what everyone (except Higgins and O'Brien) already knew -- the project concerned was a real disaster. Perhaps Higgins should have listened to his own words -- "It's hard to find a convincing business plan for spending so much money on a new system – to say nothing of the huge risk to the Internet in New Zealand".

I wonder whether the pair will now attempt to sue Domainz for defamation in the wake of this report?

Are We Being Locked Out?
I've received an email which suggests that NZ is running the risk of being grouped along with China and some other Pacific Rim countries and added to lists of blocked address ranges.

The effect of this would be to make connectivity to areas using the blocking lists impossible from this part of the world.

Who remembers the problems that affected some NZ web-surfers a few months back (see: Hello, Help Desk? on this page)? Will we see more of this type of lock-out in future?

I'm looking for more information on this issue so contact me if you can help.

Have your say.

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