ICA Tells ICANN To Implement RAA Amendments and Move Foreward on Registrants’ Rights

Just over two years ago the domain world was abuzz when the scandal-tinged collapse of RegisterFly revealed serious inadequacies in the standard Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) and in ICANN’s enforcement of that key contractual document. The outcry over that incident set in motion a process for the development of substantial strengthening amendments to the RAA. While the final product took longer than we would have preferred, and is not quite as robust as we hoped for, these proposed amendments to the RAA still represent a very substantial upgrading of requirements for accreditation and protection for registrants. They were approved by the GNSO at ICANN’s March meeting in Mexico City and the ICANN Board subsequently voted to put them out for a short comment period.

ICA just weighed in with a comment letter asking the ICANN Board to approve these amendments at the earliest opportunity. That action will not only beef up the standard registrar contract but will set in motion a process for developing a registrant rights charter, with a proposed draft to be available by the end of July. We look forward to participation in the important process of delineating the rights of registrants within the ICANN framework. Finally, approval of these RAA amendments is not the end of that story, as the ICANN Board is also committed to establishing a process for developing additional amendments to the RAA.

The text of our letter follows:

By E-Mail    

Board of Directors
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330
Marina del Rey, CA 90292-6601

Re: GNSO-Approved RAA Amendments

Dear Members of the ICANN Board:

This comment letter is submitted by the Internet Commerce Association (ICA) in regard to ICANN’s March 6th notice establishing a 30 day public comment period regarding the GNSO-approved amendments to the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA).

ICA is a not-for-profit trade association representing the direct search industry. Its membership is composed of domain name registrants that invest in domain names (DNs) and develop the associated websites, as well as the companies that serve them. Professional domain name registrants are a major source of the fees that support registrars, registries, and ICANN itself. The ICA is an International Member of ICANN’s Commercial and Business Constituency and presently has more than 120 members located in the United States and thirteen other nations.

Executive Summary

The ICA urges swift Board approval of the proposed RAA amendments.

Discussion

The ICA previously filed extensive comments on August 4, 2008 (available at http://forum.icann.org/lists/raa-consultation/msg00067.html) in regard to an earlier but largely similar version of proposed RAA amendments.

We are disappointed that many of our suggestions for improvement were not adopted in this final version, particularly those relating to registrant protections – such as permitting a registrar to avoid escrow of the underlying data when a registrant chooses privacy or proxy protection, and failing to place an affirmative duty on registrars to more actively monitor the activities of associated resellers. Nonetheless, these amendments represent a very substantial improvement in and strengthening of the RAA that will help protect registrants against a repetition of the RegisterFly fiasco. We therefore support adoption of these amendments by the Board as soon as possible.

We note that one-half of all registrar agreements are due for renewal in the next year, and seventy percent in the next two years, making it particularly important that the Board act expeditiously. We also urge the Board to explore mechanisms for incentivizing all registrars to adopt these amendments in the near term, as registrants have no ready means of determining which version of the RAA a particular registrar is operating under and should enjoy the same protections no matter which ICANN-accredited registrar they choose to utilize for their domain registrations.

Further, Board approval of these RAA amendments will activate two important provisions of the GNSO Council’s Mexico City motion on this matter:

1.    The creation of a GNSO-ALAC group to draft a registrant rights charter, with an initial draft to be completed no later than July 31, 2009.
2.    The establishment of a specific process and timeline to move forward with additional potential amendments to the RAA.

The ICA is strongly supportive of the contemplated registrant rights’ charter and will work to ensure that a comprehensive document is adopted expeditiously.

Conclusion

We hope that the Board finds our comments useful as it considers approval of these RAA amendments.

Thank you for your consideration of our views in this matter.

Sincerely,
Philip S. Corwin
Counsel, Internet Commerce Association