Blacknight Comments - Potential Change to Registrar Accreditation Insurance Requirement

[Michele Neylon - Blacknight <michele@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Sir / Madam

I am submitting these comments in my personal capacity as founder and managing 
director of Blacknight Internet Solutions Ltd, an ICANN accredited registrar 
based in Ireland.

I have engaged with ICANN staff and other members of the ICANN Community around 
the topic of "Underserved Regions" over the past 18 months. While I still think 
that ICANN needs to clearly define what it means by "underserved regions" I 
also think that reviewing the criteria and processes associated with becoming 
an ICANN accredited registrar is an important and worthwhile exercise. Like any 
process it should be reviewed from time to time to make sure that it is still 
"in tune" with reality. The world of 2001 was very different and things like 
data escrow did not exist.

As a company based in Ireland we had some difficulty in applying to ICANN to 
become accredited as, at the time, the entire process was framed with American 
companies in mind. In fact this led to us delaying our accreditation by about 2 
years due to us misunderstanding how we could represent ourselves in order to 
meet the criteria as we understood them.
With respect to insurance the terminology is problematic. " commercial general 
liability" insurance is an American concept, so even though we do have more 
than adequate insurance it wouldn't be called that. 

Are there valid reasons why ICANN should continue to require CGL insurance?
I'm not sure that there are. What purpose is the insurance meant to serve 
exactly?

Has any registrar or gTLD or ccTLD registry found CGL coverage useful in 
running their businesses?

We are legally obliged to have several different types of insurance in order to 
operate a business in Ireland. We review our insurance every year to make sure 
that we have ample coverage for our staff, key staff, equipment and an ever 
growing range of potential issues. 

Are there alternatives to CGL insurance that would provide similar or better 
protections for registrants that could be instituted either as new contractual 
requirements or as "best practice" recommendations?
I'm not sure it's really required, as with data escrow etc., the domains and 
the data are protected and there is a fully operational process to migrate 
domains to a new registrar in case of registrar failure.


If ICANN eliminates the CGL requirement, should the elimination apply to all 
registrars or should "waivers" be granted only on a case-by-case basis?

Any changes to requirements on registrars should be applied to all registrars 
equally.
There are multiple reasons for this:
- domain services are global in their nature. Registrants will assume that all 
registrars are the same and registrars compete across national boundaries all 
the time
- managing "waivers" is time consuming and costly for both ICANN and the 
registrars
- what criteria could be applied? Any attempt to change the rules around 
something like this would be open to "gaming" if not applied uniformly

Regards

Michele


--
Mr Michele Neylon
Blacknight Solutions
Hosting & Colocation, Domains
http://www.blacknight.host/
http://blog.blacknight.com/
http://www.technology.ie/
Intl. +353 (0) 59  9183072
Social: http://mneylon.social 
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Road,Graiguecullen,Carlow,Ireland  Company No.: 370845