Bala Pillai's Sydney 2000 Myth

Bala Pillai trumpets his purchase of the Sydney2000.net domain as something of an achievement, and his Orkut profile's albums has pictures of various magazine articles relating to that. Any person who has been using the Internet for an extended period of time immediately spots the unethical nature of the purchase. It is termed as 'domain hijacking' or 'domain squatting'. This refers to the unethical practice of purchasing domain names knowing fully well that some other parties would be interested in it in the future. A shortcut to make money from those other parties in the future, this is recognized as the one of the most unethical practices in the cyberworld. Unfortunately, the law with respect to cyber squatting differs from country to country.

Since the Government of Australia was involved deeply in the organization of the Sydney 2000 Olympics, it was just a matter of time before Bala Pillai had to face legal action with regard to this squatting. Misleading people who view his profile, Bala Pillai conveniently manages to hide this fact. However, a little bit of Googling led us to unearth this mail on a newsgroup:

http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/199705/msg00048.html

Bala Pillai's APIC was sued for domain hijacking and had to stop giving out domain space or email ids belonging to the Sydney2000.net domain

More mail exchanges proving that Bala Pillai had detractors who were completely justified in their comments even in those early days:

http://www.apnic.net/mailing-lists/apple/archive/1997/05/msg00070.html

http://www.open4success.com/Olnews/mbox.cnj/1196.html

http://www.open4success.com/Olnews/mbox.cnj/1212.html

Quote from the above link: ...that he is using this intentional violation of their trademark as a means to publicize himself. This is no better than the behaviour of teenaged hackers who vainly imagine that they should be praised for breaking into systems by guessing passwords. Sucking up trademarks is nothing new. It is simply one of the many classic examples of how individuals with nothing of value to offer on their own are able to capitalize on the value created by others....

http://www.open4success.com/Olnews/mbox.cnj/1235.html

The above mail has been posted by an ex-employee of Bala (agreed he may have had some personal grudge, but Bala'a present activities only tend to prove the ex-employee's accusations). Quoting from that mail here: ...Bala always uses other people, their ideas, and anything, anyone he can to try any get his picture somewhere. He knew almost nothing about the Internet until I joined his company and built his ISP from the ground up and got barely any recognition or thanx for it. When it came to the crunch, and he no longer needed me to keep the company running, he disposed of me like anything else he no longer has
use for...

http://www.open4success.com/Olnews/mbox.cnj/1240.html

The above mail is from Bala Pillai himself. Observe how he tries to do a cover-up instead of coming clean with the facts before the public. Tends to make any person suspicious, to say the least.

The facts have been placed in front of your eyes. The rest is for you to decide!