We got pretty excited recently when ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade said that registrants were ICANN’s primary customer[1] – but we must now curb our enthusiasm in light of the final treatment of registrants’ rights in the newly approved Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA).
The draft RAA contained a statement of Registrants’ Rights and Responsibilities (RRR) that all accredited registrars must provide a link to. Last month ICA filed comments that endorsed and suggested additional improvements to the alternate RRR proposed by ICANN’s Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group (NCSG). We did that because the draft RRR did not go far enough in providing detailed background on the basic rights that all domain registrants should expect – including uniform and neutral UDRP administration, and timely and secure domain transfers[2].
The response of ICANN to the urgings of the NCSG and ICA was not to add a single strengthening word to the RRR – but to change the title by deleting the word “Rights” and substituting the word “Benefits”. So the RRR has now become the RBR.
Now we don’t know about you, but we think that’s a significant downgrade. After all, revolutions have been fought to secure basic “rights”, and they are enshrined in Constitutions and Universal Declarations. Whereas “benefits” are something you get when you join a club or organization, or take out an insurance policy. Or, even worse, something you collect when you’re unemployed or disabled. Registrants want and deserve the protections that come with rights.
One portion of the ICANN Board Resolution approving the RAA seems completely unaware of the downgrade, and in fact uses the deleted term multiple times in its description of the RRR as one of the “highlights” of the new RAA[3] (so just substitute “benefits” each place you read “rights”):
A Registrant Rights and Responsibilities Document that sets out, in clear and simple language, the rights and responsibilities that are set out in the 2013 RAA, such as the types of information that registrants can expect to be made available to them about terms and conditions of registrations, fees and customer service processes. The document also emphasizes the registrant’s role in providing accurate contact information, and responsibilities in maintaining domain name registrations. These enumerated rights and responsibilities are not comprehensive of all registrant rights and responsibilities set out in consensus policies, however this document is closely tied to the terms of the 2013 RAA. (Emphasis added)
Yet another portion of the very same Resolution, explaining the main concerns raised in public comments, contains this curious explanation:
Some commenters raised concerns about the new Registrant Rights and Responsibilities document, suggesting that it does not go far enough in recognizing more general rights and responsibilities. Because of the specific purpose of the Registrant Rights and Responsibilities specification – which is to track to the terms of the 2013 RAA – we have clarified the title of the document. If the community wishes to produce a broader declaration of the rights and responsibilities, nothing within the 2013 RAA would preclude that work.
So, in response to concerns that the RRR didn’t go far enough in recognizing registrant rights, ICANN edited the document title to eliminate any reference to rights? How was that in any way responsive to those comments? And, for our part, we weren’t referencing “more general rights and responsibilities”, as our letter made clear that we were addressing the rights of registrants in their dealings with registrars accredited by ICANN to serve as middlemen in the domain sales and renewal market.
Finally, when we reviewed the summary of the changes to the final and approved RAA[4], we found this further brief explanation of the downgrade:
Edit reflects new title in response to public comment.
We found that explanation to be quite strange as well, as we don’t recall reading a single comment asking ICANN for the rhetorical downgrade. In fact, the only comments filed on the RRR were those of NCSG and ICA urging that the statement of rights be strengthened.
Well, as the Board resolution states – “If the community wishes to produce a broader declaration of the rights and responsibilities, nothing within the 2013 RAA would preclude that work.” I guess that we, the NCSG, and other members of the community who believe that registrants deserve a standard statement of their rights need to get to work.
But for now, in ICANN’s official view, registrants seem to have responsibilities but no offsetting rights, just some benefits.