Dear ICANN board directors:
While we are
aware that you have been monitoring the
public outrage in response to
registrar activities
that have been variously described as
"front-running"
and/or "domain reservation" or "cart-hold"
or
"cart-reserve" activities, we are of the view that the
obligation to
safeguard the operational stability of
Registrar Services now requires the
immediate
temporary establishment of a consensus policy
curtailing such
practices to be taken in accordance
with the board's authority under the
provisions set
out in section 4.3.4 of the Registrar
Accreditation
Agreement, that states:
"A specification or policy
established by the ICANN
Board of Directors on a temporary basis, without
a
prior recommendation by the council of an ICANN
Supporting Organization,
shall also be considered to
be a Consensus Policy if adopted by the ICANN
Board of
Directors by a vote of at least two-thirds of its
members, so
long as the Board reasonably determines
that immediate temporary
establishment of a
specification or policy on the subject is necessary
to
maintain the operational stability of Registrar
Services, Registry
Services, the DNS, or the Internet,
and that the proposed specification or
policy is as
narrowly tailored as feasible to achieve
those
objectives."
Please be advised that we have reached this
conclusion
based in part upon the following considerations:
1.
The use of "cart-hold" or "cart-reserve" systems
has been actively
under discussion within the
registrars constituency since early October 2007
when
three different registrars first advanced the concept
within the
context of a straw poll on the impact to
registrants were the AGP to be
eliminated
in its entirety (footnote 1)
-- see
http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/registrars/msg05123.htmlhttp://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/registrars/msg05130.htmlhttp://gnso.icann.org/mailing-
lists/archives/registrars/msg05131.htmlhttp://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/registrars/msg05380.htmlhttp://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/registrars/msg05626.html2.
The use of this domain name reservation practice
next came to be adopted by a
large-volume registrar
(Network Solutions) on or about 8 January 2008,
and
the practice was immediately condemned by the
community at large (with
extensive coverage in the
Tech media, the general press, in blogs world wide,
on
domain name forums, and on community discussion
lists).
3. The
actions of Network Solutions has now spawned a
similar project on the part of
another large-volume
registrar (
register.com), and we have no reason to
believe that other
large-volume registrars will
refrain from rapidly setting up comparable
efforts.
(footnote -- see
http://help.register.com/cgi-bin/register_help.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=2796&p_created=1185549188&p_sid=*Nq5PxZi&p_accessibility=0&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPSZwX3NvcnRfYnk9JnBfZ3JpZHNvcnQ9JnBfcm93X2NudD01NDImcF9wcm9kcz0mcF9jYXRzPSZwX3B2PSZwX2N2PSZwX3NlYXJjaF90eXBlPWFuc3dlcnMuc2VhcmNoX25sJnBfcGFnZT0x&p_li=&p_topview=1)
While
we recognize that we are unable to point to an
ICANN-approved definition of
"operational stability of
Registrar Services" (as no such definition
exists
within either current ICANN contracts or supporting
materials), we
take guidance from the ICANN Policy
Document ICP-3 which posits that
activities that do
not interfere with the operation of the DNS
are,
generally speaking, those that operate within
community-established
norms.
Such norms tend to respect a set of long-established
principles
such as the principle of least
astonishment. When registrants currently
search for a
domain name at these registrars using normative
search
practices, they are clearly astonished by that which
results from
their efforts: the inability to readily
register the domain name of
their choice with a more
competitive registrar and/or the domain name that
they
have selected appearing in the WHOIS with the name of
the registrar
as the registrant of record
(footnote -- see
http://help.register.com/cgi-bin/register_help.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=2796&p_created=1185549188&p_sid=*Nq5PxZi&p_accessibility=0&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPSZwX3NvcnRfYnk9JnBfZ3JpZHNvcnQ9JnBfcm93X2NudD01NDImcF9wcm9kcz0mcF9jYXRzPSZwX3B2PSZwX2N2PSZwX3NlYXJjaF90eXBlPWFuc3dlcnMuc2VhcmNoX25sJnBfcGFnZT0x&p_li=&p_topview=1).
The
community's trust in ICANN's ability to manage the
Domain Name System is at
stake. It is inappropriate
for such registrar activities to proceed
unabated in a
policy vaccuum. Accordingly we call upon the
ICANN
board to establish a temporary narrowly-tailored
policy as a stopgap
until such time as the relevant
policy-recommending ICANN Supporting
Organizations can
provide a comprehensive consensus policy
solution.
[Submitted to Board via At-Large Advisory Committee Board
Liaison, Wendy Seltzer]