Business Constituency comment on proposed registry agreement for .PRO gTLD

[Steve DelBianco <sdelbianco@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The ICANN Business Constituency (BC) submits the attached comment on the 
Proposed Renewal of .PRO Registry Agreement.

On 21-Jun, we filed 
comment<http://www.bizconst.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/BC-comment-on-Registry-Agreement-for-.TRAVEL-renewal.pdf>
 on the .TRAVEL registry agreement renewal, where we raised concern with ICANN 
proposing the URS.  The BC reiterates those concerns with respect to the .PRO 
renewal:

Concern About Top Down, Staff-Initiated Process Inconsistent with ICANN’s Bylaws

We interpret the words “ICANN has proposed” to mean that ICANN staff members 
within the Global Domains Division (GDD) have proposed this approach. As a 
result, the proposed renewal registry agreement (RA) for .Travel and the other 
two referenced legacy gTLDs all contain a Section 2.8 (Protection of Legal 
Rights of Third Parties) that requires compliance with the Trademark 
Post-Delegation Dispute Resolution Procedure (PDDRP) and the Uniform Rapid 
Suspension (URS) system, both of which were developed as implementation 
measures for the general rights protection policy of the new gTLD program.

We wish to make clear at the outset that the BC’s concern is not in regard to 
the adoption of new gTLD rights protection mechanisms (RPMs) for legacy gTLDs. 
The BC has been a strong advocate for these RPMs as applied to new gTLD 
registries, and would support the GNSO taking up the question of and initiating 
a PDP regarding whether they should become consensus policies applicable to all 
legacy gTLDs.

Rather, our concern is that a unilateral decision by ICANN contractual staff to 
take the new gTLD registry agreement as the starting point for renewal RAs for 
legacy gTLDs has the effect of transforming the PDDRP and the URS into de facto 
Consensus Policies without following the procedures laid out in ICANN’s Bylaws 
for their creation. The fact that these RPMs are present in all three proposed 
renewal RAs referenced in this letter reinforces that conclusion. While 
consistency of registry agreements is a worthwhile goal, it should not trump 
consistency of action in accord with ICANN’s Bylaws.

In addition, please see the full BC comment on .TRAVEL renewal 
(here<http://forum.icann.org/lists/comments-travel-renewal-12may15/msg00010.html>
 and 
here<http://www.bizconst.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/BC-comment-on-Registry-Agreement-for-.TRAVEL-renewal.pdf>.)
   This comment was drafted by Phil Corwin, Andy Abrams, Andrew Mack, and Jim 
Baskin.

It was approved in accordance with the BC charter.

—
Steve DelBianco
Vice chair for policy coordination
ICANN Business Constituency