You might recall the domain dispute that took place between Donald Wasylyna, and the at that time GamesNET Board of Directors which we reported on. The case finally resulted in a settlement between the two parties on February the 4th of 2004. Part of the settlement is an agreement to remain silent over the outcome of the case from both sides.

The 15th of this month however, Donald Wasylyna, who regained the domain GamesNET.net as part of the settlement, published part of the evidence on the GamesNET website. Wasylyna explains that he was only able to gain access to the evidence over Federal court-orders. “This process is painfully slow and very expensive”, he wrote on the GamesNET website.

The document does not contain any evidence from Wasylyna himself, as that was left out prior to publication. “I will likely publish all of the civil and criminal evidence as time permits”, Wasylyna said on the website.

“CHL (CoolHandLuke, nick of Wasylyna, ed.) was extremely selective in what he assembled to post on his web site” said Entrope, admin on GameSurge. Entrope was one of the defendants in the domain name dispute. “I do not recall the exact numbers, but he produced somewhere around 2000 pages of documents, and we produced about 3000 pages.”

“I provided only highlights which seem most pertinent regarding criminal activity”, Wasylyna explained to IRC-Junkie in a reaction. “I will likely publish more as time permits.”

Wasylyna also explains his decision to release these documents: “It is my goal to provide awareness to the significant problem of identity theft, the failings of ICANN, and how both make domain theft a simple task.”

“We believe his motivations in releasing the documents are simply to defame us (the defendants, ed.) and GameSurge” Entrope continues. “His IRC network is not going anywhere, so he wants to diminish what we have done. [...] I believe that if  CHL had talked to a lawyer, any lawyer would have told him several reasons that such a post might land CHL back in court.”

GameSurge is currently listed as 5th largest IRC network on the IRC statistics site NetSplit.de, GamesNET can currently not be found back in the top 25, and was yesterday at position 214 with around 450 users.

Wasylyna explains: “Launching (or relaunching in my case) an IRC network is much different than it was in 1996.  Back then, GamesNET was the only IRC network dedicated solely to Internet-based gaming.  In addition, DDOS and botnets were non-existent.  It seems best to wait for the criminal charges to come before I re-contact my friends in the gaming and ISP industries.  I’ve been told a he-said she-said scenario would likely motivate them to become permanently disinterested in my endeavors.”