Afilias is a consortium of eighteen domain name registrars located worldwide. It has faced stern criticism for its handling of the domain's roll-out. NeuLevel, the .biz registry, faced similar criticism for its poor handling of the .biz domain's roll-out.
The problem for Afilias began when it attempted to protect trade mark owners by giving them the right to reserve .info domain names for their marks in advance of the names being opened to the public. However, the system was automated in such a way that registrations could be made by anyone claiming to own a trade mark, even if the name being registered was of a nature that is not eligible for trade mark protection. Accordingly, thousands of registrations were placed for generic names such as travel.info and sex.info.
According to Newsbytes.com, Afias has not yet decided how to redistribute any recovered names.