Eugene Kashpureff, the man who last month twice attacked Network Solutions' InterNIC domain registry, rerouting traffic to his server and prompting the company to seek a restraining order, has posted an apology as he attempts to negotiate an out-of-court settlement with the company.
"I sincerely apologize to the Internet community as a whole and to Network Solutions Inc. for my actions," Kashpureff, the owner of the alternative domain-name registrar AlterNIC, wrote on his email discussion list. "I will not engage in these or similar actions in the future. I am cooperating with Network Solutions to try and make sure that my actions cannot be duplicated by others. Again, I offer my apologies to the Internet community."
Kashpureff and Network Solutions have been negotiating a settlement since Friday, and a formal apology was "part of the discussion we had," said Network Solutions spokesman Chris Clough. He said an out-of-court agreement was "the direction we are headed in right now." Settlement discussions continued Monday.
Kashpureff could not be reached for comment.
Network Solutions holds an exclusive agreement with the National Science Foundation through March 1998 as registrar of the generic top-level domains .com, .net, .org, .gov, and .mil. Kashpureff, one of a host of would-be registrars seeking to expand the name space and open it up to new registrars, twice last month managed to reroute Net traffic from InterNIC to AlterNIC.
