Post expiration domain name recovery

["Pieter van Ieperen" <pieter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear ICANN-workgroup members and other readers,


My answers to the workgroup questions:

1. No, because registrars are under no obligation to grant "auto renew
grace" or "redemption grace" to registrants. And if they were under any
obligation, they could levy excessive fees for these specific services.

2. Registrars seem to need many words to describe that registrants have
no rights at all after expiration ("as a courtesy we may ...").

3. Many registrar notices will never reach the registrant because of the
"reseller" problem.

4. Deactivation of DNS should be mandatory upon expiration (exception
being an informational webpage), since this is the only expiration
warning that many registrants get. WHOIS domain status should show
"registered" before and "expired" after expiration. WHOIS domain expiry
date should not move one year forward.

5. Seems a little premature to discuss this, since most registrars don't
even allow transfer in the auto renew grace period that preceeds the
redemption grace period. In theory a possibility, on condition that the
ex-registrant controls the transfer.


My suggestions:

Make auto renew grace and redemption grace a mandatory registrar service
with maximized fees.
Set a prohibition against standard registration agreements that "sign
away" these service rights.
Prescribe that thick registry WHOIS and registrar WHOIS show all
ex-registrant data up to the death of the domain (when it drops).
In short make sure that the ex-registrant controls life and death of the
domain name during the whole life cycle, and not the registrar.


Further improvement:

Merge the auto renew grace period and the redemption grace period in one
"expired-renewable" period. Expiry will be an implicit delete order and
can be handled (nearly) the same way as an explicit delete order.


Friendly greetings,


Pieter van Ieperen
The Netherlands