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ICA Supports Swift Adoption of GNSO-Approved RAA Amendments

  • To: "raa-consultation@xxxxxxxxx" <raa-consultation@xxxxxxxxx>
  • Subject: ICA Supports Swift Adoption of GNSO-Approved RAA Amendments
  • From: Phil Corwin <pcorwin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 18:15:33 -0400

BUTERA & ANDREWS
Attorneys at Law
1301 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20004-1701
202-347-6875
Philip S. Corwin, Partner
pcorwin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:pcorwin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>


By E-Mail

               April 6, 2009

Board of Directors
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330
Marina del Rey, CA 90292-6601

Re: GNSO-Approved RAA Amendments

Dear Members of the ICANN Board:

This comment letter is submitted by the Internet Commerce Association (ICA) in 
regard to ICANN's March 6th notice establishing a 30 day public comment period 
regarding the GNSO-approved amendments to the Registrar Accreditation Agreement 
(RAA).

ICA is a not-for-profit trade association representing the direct search 
industry. Its membership is composed of domain name registrants that invest in 
domain names (DNs) and develop the associated websites, as well as the 
companies that serve them. Professional domain name registrants are a major 
source of the fees that support registrars, registries, and ICANN itself. The 
ICA is an International Member of ICANN's Commercial and Business Constituency 
and presently has more than 120 members located in the United States and 
thirteen other nations.

Executive Summary

The ICA urges swift Board approval of the proposed RAA amendments.

The ICA is also enthused that such adoption will set in motion a process to 
draft a registrant rights charter for adoption by ICANN.

Discussion

The ICA previously filed extensive comments on August 4, 2008 (available at 
http://forum.icann.org/lists/raa-consultation/msg00067.html ) in regard to an 
earlier but largely similar version of proposed RAA amendments.

We are disappointed that many of our suggestions for improvement were not 
adopted in this final version, particularly those relating to registrant 
protections - such as permitting a registrar to avoid escrow of the underlying 
data when a registrant chooses privacy or proxy protection, and failing to 
place an affirmative duty on registrars to more actively monitor the activities 
of associated resellers. Nonetheless, these amendments represent a very 
substantial improvement in and strengthening of the RAA that will help protect 
registrants against a repetition of the RegisterFly fiasco. We therefore 
support adoption of these amendments by the Board as soon as possible.

We note that one-half of all registrar agreements are due for renewal in the 
next year, and seventy percent in the next two years, making it particularly 
important that the Board act expeditiously. We also urge the Board to explore 
mechanisms for incentivizing all registrars to adopt these amendments in the 
near term, as registrants have no ready means of determining which version of 
the RAA a particular registrar is operating under and should enjoy the same 
protections no matter which ICANN-accredited registrar they choose to utilize 
for their domain registrations.

Further, Board approval of these RAA amendments will activate two important 
provisions of the GNSO Council's Mexico City motion on this matter:

 1.  The creation of a GNSO-ALAC group to draft a registrant rights charter, 
with an initial draft to be completed no later than July 31, 2009.
 2.  The establishment of a specific process and timeline to move forward with 
additional potential amendments to the RAA.

The ICA is strongly supportive of the contemplated registrant rights' charter 
and will work to ensure that a comprehensive document is adopted expeditiously.

Conclusion

We hope that the Board finds our comments useful as it considers approval of 
these RAA amendments.

Thank you for your consideration of our views in this matter.



Sincerely,

Philip S. Corwin

Counsel, Internet Commerce Association




Philip S. Corwin
Partner
Butera & Andrews
1301 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Suite 500
Washington, DC 20004

202-347-6875 (office)

202-347-6876 (fax)

202-255-6172 (cell)

"Luck is the residue of design." -- Branch Rickey

Attachment: ICA-GNSO_RAA-Final-040609.doc
Description: ICA-GNSO_RAA-Final-040609.doc



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