Proposed Renewal of .TRAVEL Sponsored TLD Registry Agreement

[Jay Chapman <jay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear ICANN:

I am writing in regard to the Proposed Renewal of .TRAVEL Sponsored TLD
Registry Agreement issued for public comment on May 12, 2015.

I am strongly *opposed* to the inclusion of a modified version of the new
gTLD rights protection mechanisms in Specification 7 of the proposed RA,
especially Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS).

All the new gTLD RPMs were implementation details of the new gTLD program
and are not ICANN consensus policies applicable to all registries and
registrars. The URS can become a consensus policy only after a full policy
development process (PDP) engaged in by the entire ICANN community of
stakeholders. The ICANN community has not even received the new gTLD RPM
Issues Report that staff will be providing to the GNSO in September 2015.

Imposing URS on an incumbent gTLD via the contracting process is an
absolutely unacceptable staff intervention into the policymaking process.
Approval of this draft contract would constitute top-down, staff-driven
policymaking in direct violation of ICANN’s stated commitment to the
bottom-up, private sector led policy development process.

Therefore, the .Travel renewal RA should be referred for Board
consideration only after Specification 7/URS has been removed from the
agreement, along with all other provisions derived from the new gTLD RA
that are not established consensus policies applicable to incumbent gTLDs.

Thank you for your consideration of my views.

Sincerely,

Jay Chapman
President,
Digimedia

* <http://www.digimedia.com>*