Comments from Cronon AG on the proposed 2013 RAA

["Michael Shohat, Cronon AG" <mshohat@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear ICANN staff,

CRONON AG is a European registrar of ccTLDs and gTLDs. Our contracts
with registrants are governed by German law.

We are specifically concerned by proposed section 6.3. of the RAA,
granting ICANN board the unilateral right to amend the contract as it
sees fit. Not only does it seem unfair to include a provision giving one
party the opportunity to approve amendments unilaterally, it is also a
section that wouldn't be recognized by German courts.

Moreover, registrars are already required to include the provisions in
existing section 3.7.7 in their contracts with registrants. Proposed
section 6.3. would allow ICANN to change these provisions in
registrants' contracts with us.

German law does not allow to require registrants to enter into
provisions which can be changed by the declaration of one party only. A
section stating that provisions are still binding after they have been
changed unilaterally would have no legal effect and would not be
recognized by German courts. Thus under German law registrants can only
be required to accept the provisions active at the time they enter the
contract.

It seems proposed section 6.3 is unacceptable not only to registrars
but to other stakeholders as well. It has also been massively criticized
when included in the revised new gTLD Registry Agreement commented in
February. We urge ICANN to remove this section.

Concerning the proposed data retention specification, we advise that
German data protection laws ban or severely restrict the maintaining of
payment data, log files and IP addresses under various circumstances.
Obviously, CRONON AG would respect applicable data protection laws ahead
of any obligations which might find their way into the final RAA version.

To conclude, a remark on form:

Like many of our registrar colleagues we've been closely following the
RAA negotiations and were very disappointed by the way ICANN staff
handled the final part. We are thus writing in strong support of the
registrar negotiating team and its statement from March 8th.

Basically, it seems that after getting Registrar agreement through
honest negotiations on many items that are nonetheless challenging to
many of us (mostly some of the LEA demands), ICANN staff saved their own
worst demands for the end and then ran away from the negotiating table.
We don't consider this behaviour "negotiating in good faith".

Kind regards,
Michael Shohat



-- 

Dr. Michael Shohat
Head of Registrar Services
--------------------------------------
fon: +49 30 39802-0
fax: +49 30 39802-222
email: mshohat@xxxxxxxxxx
website: www.cronon.net
--------------------------------------
Cronon AG
Professional IT-Services
Pascalstraße 10
D-10587 Berlin
--------------------------------------
Chairman of Supervisory Board: René Wienholtz
Board of Directors: Christian Müller (Chairman),
Christoph Steffens
County Court: Berlin-Charlottenburg HRB 77957