Re: [gnso-pednr-dt] PEDNR: A proposed path forward

[Alan Greenberg <alan.greenberg@xxxxxxxxx>]

James, thanks for getting this going. There is some good stuff here, 
but as you can surely imagine, in my view it does not really go far 
enough. I will make a few comments below, but more will come.
Alan

At 01/11/2010 03:12 PM, James M. Bladel wrote:

> Good afternoon, everyone.
>
>
> With our review of community feedback complete, several of us on the WG
> have been working to synthesize all the various positions and opinions
> expressed on PEDNR into a compromise proposal.
>
>
> The objectives of putting this forward are:
>
> (1)  Provide additional safeguards for registrants to guard against the
> inadvertent loss of registrations, secured by Consensus Policy.
> (2)  Provide some consistency in the registrant's experience with
> expiring names.
> (3)  Accomplish (1) and (3) in a manner that does not unnecessarily
> disrupt the numerous commercial and non-commercial activities in our
> industry.
>
> With these in mind, we submit the following slate of proposals for your
> consideration.
>
>
> Grace Period (Secured by Consensus Policy)
> -------------------------------------------
> Guaranteed five-day registrar grace period (what to call it will need to
> be determined so as to avoid confusion with similarly named periods)
> following expiration.  Only the RAE can recover/renew name during this
> period.  While the name will not go to auction during this period, it
> could be explicitly deleted by the Registrar, which commences the RGP.
Before registrars began the practice of transferring and auctioning 
domains at expiration, all registrants had a 30-75 day period within 
which to recover their expired name. Typically it was 60. This WG has 
decided not to question the registrar right/ability to do this (which 
does earn a lot of money for some), but that is no reason to reduce 
the time that a registrant has to recover. That is where the 30 came 
from, since it was the absolute minimum before. And that required 
deleting the name on day 1 of expiration, a practice that few registrars had.
So, my question to counter Jeff's is not why more time, but rather 
why is it that registrars feel that REDUCING the amount of time by a 
factor of 6 to 15 times is reasonable.
I do appreciate that this proposal says that registrars will delay 
beginning auctions until the period has expired. It is a nice idea. 
But this is not really of importance from the point of view of our 
charter, which is considering whether the name is recoverable. Some 
registrars have a practice of starting auctions very early, but the 
terms are t hat if a RAE comes in and says they want it back, the 
auction/sale is cancelled or reversed.
> Renewal notices (Secured by Consensus Policy)
> ---------------------------------------------
> Requirement to send (by a method at each registrar's discretion) a
> minimum of one renewal notice to registrant no later than 10 days prior
> to expiry, and a second notice the day prior to the expiry date
> notifying the RAE that the 5-day registrar grace period will begin the
> following day.
This is basically in line with what we have discussed before, but I 
would like to understand why the first notice may come so late, given 
the statements that have been made about monthly bill processing and 
the time it may take for a registrant to process a payment.
>  Whois
> -----
> No changes to Whois recommended.
This was one of the few things that we had almost complete consensus 
on, so I am a bit surprised that it is now off the table. I do 
recognize that it is one of the few things that we have been talking 
about that would require a significant work effort on behalf of all 
registrars and registries, but I think that taking it off the table 
(as opposed to a long phase-in time) is premature.
> Community Education
> -------------------
> Registrars:
> Best practice recommendation: A registrar will design and host a
> neutral-content site with important information about how to properly
> steward a domain name and prevent unintended loss.
> Registrar should provide on its web site, and send to registrant in
> separate e-mail to registrant immediately following initial
> registration, a set of instructions for keeping domain name records
> current and for lessening the chance of mistakenly allowing the name to
> expire.
No problem here.

> ALAC:
> Budget time/money/resources to public education campaign to encourage
> renewals and prevent unwanted loss of a name.
Not sure this fits as an ALAC task (all the more so because we HAVE 
no money and minimal non-volunteer resources) but certainly ICANN 
with involvement of ALAC is reasonable.
As I said, more to come, since there are a number of issues that have 
been omitted completely (such as web sites going dark or redirected), 
but that will wait.
Alan