Board resolution on registry contracts

[met@xxxxxxx]

Dear Paul,

I was pleased to see the Board resolutions from last week's meeting
regarding proposed registry agreements for .biz, .info and .org.

I note that the economic study which the board directed you to
commission would address a number of questions which are equally
relevant to the issue of creating new Top Level Domains, as they are
to the operation of existing TLDs.  I urge you to incorporate new TLD
issues in the study, and specifically to ask the consultants to look
at the economic impact of defensive registrations by trademark owners
in new TLDs.  As you know, evaluations of the first round of new TLDs
have already identified the prevalence of defensive registrations as
a common phenomenon.  Please let me know if this is consistent with
your plans regarding the study.

Regarding the renegotiation of the provisions of these agreements on
traffic data, I encourage you to seek to bring new registry services
that involve the use of traffic data under the new registry services
review procedure set forth in the agreement.  As the IPC stated in
its comments on the proposed registry contracts:  "The apparent total
exemption of such new services from any review procedure remains
unjustified, in our view...We note with some concern that section 3.1
(f) of the draft agreements would allow registry operators, without
any scrutiny or review whatsoever, to provide a commercial service to
identify 'pre-tasted' domain names -- those non-existent names within
an particular gTLD that have attracted the most traffic during the
preceding weeks or months.   Without pre-judging the merits of such a
service or its potential impact on cybersquatting, trademark
infringement, and other adverse consequences that have already been
observed to result from the 'domain tasting' phenomenon, IPC is
confident that such a service would at the very least merit some
review under the new registry services procedure.  Under the draft
agreements it would apparently receive none."  I urge you to seek to
correct this significant flaw when you carry out the renegotiation
requested by the Board. Of course if the announcement this morning
means that the renegotiation has been completed, I can only express
my disappointment that this flaw remains uncorrected.

Thanks for your consideration, and please let me know if you have any
questions.

Steve Metalitz
President, Intellectual Property Constituency, GNSO
cc:  John Jeffrey