September 2008 - At-Large - lists.icann.org

Language Issues
by Danny Younger Sept. 27, 2008

Sept. 27, 2008

re: "we introduced rules that allow the ALAC to get rid of people who cannot participate; there is really no excuse for not applying them." Vittorio, The Chair is aware of the rules but has decided not to apply the rules. That's why we are in this mess.

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Re: [At-Large] Res: "We can't be bothered to vote; so just send us the travel vouchers for Cairo"
by Adam Peake Sept. 27, 2008

Sept. 27, 2008

I think it's important the chair find out why members of the committee aren't voting. And I mean the chair conduct the check, not staff. Is it because the information about the vote wasn't clear, were reminders sent out, do staff chase down people who haven't responded (might say that shouldn't be necessary, but actually looks like it might be...) What is the process for conducting votes. I am sure language can be a problem, I am sure Internet access can be a problem, and that we are volunteers can be a problem. But all the people recently not voting have a record of service in ALAC, ICANN and many other voluntary organizations, so what's happening? Cheryl, I hope you can investigate and help us understand and fix any problem. Best, Adam

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Verisign Root Zone Signing Proposal
by Danny Younger Sept. 27, 2008

Sept. 27, 2008

See attached document.

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Re: [At-Large] GNSO Council motion 25 September 2008 on registry-registrar agreements
by Danny Younger Sept. 26, 2008

Sept. 26, 2008

Beau, Thanks for posting this resolution. On the topic of taking action in response to abuse: "This year so far, Afilias has been responsible for proactively getting more than 80,000 .info domains suspended for spam and related WHOIS accuracy violations. And it's working. For example, the number of .info domains on the Outblaze blacklist (ob.surbl.org) has dropped 85% over the last few months due to those suspensions, and .info's ranking on URIBL has dropped also." http://enemieslist.com/news/archives/2008/09/afilias_respond.html

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FW: GNSO Council motion 25 September 2008 on registry-registrar agreements
by Brendler, Beau Sept. 26, 2008

Sept. 26, 2008

.............................................................................................................. Motion proposing an Issues Report on aspects of Registry-Registrar Agreements Motion proposed by Mike Rodenbaugh, seconded by Greg Ruth with friendly amendments from Tim Ruiz and Chuck Gomes. Whereas: 1. ICANN's mission is to ensure the security and stability of the DNS, and to develop policy reasonably related to that mission. 2. Various forms of DNS abuse, in isolation and/or in the aggregate, cause a less secure and stable DNS. 3. Some of ICANN's gTLD registry agreements and appended registry-registrar agreements contain a provision such as Section 3.6.5 of the.info Registry Agreement, Appendix 8 : 3.6.5. (Registrars) acknowledge and agree that Afilias reserves the right to deny, cancel or transfer any registration or transaction, or place any domain name(s) on registry lock, hold or similar status, that it deems necessary, in its discretion; (1) to protect the integrity and stability of the registry; (2) to comply with any applicable laws, government rules or requirements, requests of law enforcement, or any dispute resolution process; (3) to avoid any liability, civil or criminal, on the part of Afilias, as well as its affiliates, subsidiaries, officers, directors, and employees; (4) per the terms of the registration agreement or (5) to correct mistakes made by Afilias or any Registrar in connection with a domain name registration. Afilias also reserves the right to place upon registry lock, hold! or similar status a domain name during resolution of a dispute. 4. Afilias, the dotInfo Registry Operator, per its recent RSTEP request, has sought to clarify and implement its specific abusive registration policy with respect to this provision. This request has been approved by ICANN. 5. Some of ICANN's gTLD registry agreements, notably the Verisign contracts for .com and .net, have no such provision. Other gTLD registry agreements do contain such provision, but the registry operators have not developed or have inconsistently developed abusive registration policies. The GNSO Council resolves to request an Issues Report from ICANN Staff within 30 days with respect to the following: 1. To identify and describe the various provisions in existing and previous gTLD registry and registry-registrar agreements which relate to contracting parties' ability to take action in response to abuse. 2. To identify and describe various provisions in a representative sampling of gTLD registration agreements which relate to contracting parties' and/or registrants rights and obligations with respect to abuse. 3. To identify and describe any previous discussion in ICANN fora which substantively pertains to provisions of this nature in any of these agreements. 4. To request an opinion of ICANN Staff as to which aspects of registration abuse policies as discussed above may be within the scope of GNSO policy development. 11 votes in favour: Philip Sheppard, Mike Rodenbaugh, Zahid Jamil, Kristina Rosette, Greg Ruth, Robin Gross, Olga Cavalli (one vote each) Tim Ruiz, Chuck Gomes (two votes each) Glen de Saint Géry GNSO Secretariat gnso.secretariat(a)gnso.icann.org http://gnso.icann.org *** Scanned ** This e-mail message is intended only for the designated recipient(s) named above. The information contained in this e-mail and any attachments may be confidential or legally privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, you may not review, retain, copy, redistribute or use this e-mail or any attachment for any purpose, or disclose all or any part of its contents. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately notify the sender by reply e-mail and permanently delete this e-mail and any attachments from your computer system.

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“Sir, just hand over your wallet gently. Please.”
by Danny Younger Sept. 26, 2008

Sept. 26, 2008

a comment from the public on Redemption Grace Period pricing abuse: http://lundstudio.wordpress.com/2008/09/26/opec-to-icann-domain-recovery-se…

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Weekly posting summary for alac@atlarge-lists.icann.org
by Thomas Narten Sept. 26, 2008

Sept. 26, 2008

Total of 25 messages in the last 7 days. script run at: Fri Sep 26 00:53:02 EDT 2008 Messages | Bytes | Who --------+------+--------+----------+------------------------ 16.00% | 4 | 13.73% | 24429 | michele at blacknight.ie 12.00% | 3 | 14.03% | 24951 | jefsey at jefsey.com 12.00% | 3 | 10.64% | 18927 | dannyyounger at yahoo.com 8.00% | 2 | 10.62% | 18885 | wendy at seltzer.com 8.00% | 2 | 6.84% | 12162 | bfausett at internet.law.pro 4.00% | 1 | 6.01% | 10693 | carlton.samuels at uwimona.edu.jm 4.00% | 1 | 5.59% | 9952 | alan.greenberg at mcgill.ca 4.00% | 1 | 4.64% | 8259 | nick.ashton-hart at icann.org 4.00% | 1 | 3.76% | 6696 | lists at privaterra.info 4.00% | 1 | 3.74% | 6656 | shahshah at irnic.ir 4.00% | 1 | 3.69% | 6572 | icann-list at sorehands.com 4.00% | 1 | 3.61% | 6425 | narten at us.ibm.com 4.00% | 1 | 3.56% | 6338 | baher.esmat at icann.org 4.00% | 1 | 3.36% | 5980 | roberto at icann.org 4.00% | 1 | 3.29% | 5857 | carlosaguirre62 at hotmail.com 4.00% | 1 | 2.87% | 5112 | johnl at iecc.com --------+------+--------+----------+------------------------ 100.00% | 25 |100.00% | 177894 | Total

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NCUC Capture Plans
by Danny Younger Sept. 25, 2008

Sept. 25, 2008

jfc, We've had a bunch of regional gatherings at which the President's Strategy Committee has laid our their concerns, one of which is "Sufficient Safeguarding Against Capture". The prospect of capture remains a legitimate community concern, and I don't want to see any group captured and denied a voice as a result of incumbent machinations. The NCUC has always been keen on freedom of expression, yet now they seek to deny a representative voice on the Council to new non-commercial constituencies that may wish to join the NonCommercial Stakeholder Grouping. So, what can we do? I'll be happy to take up the issue at the next IIC Regional Gathering, and everyone on this list may feel free to express their own views on this topic via the comment forum at http://comment.icann.org/content/iic/

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Re: [At-Large] [ALAC] Redemption Grace Period and associated rights
by Bill Silverstein Sept. 25, 2008

Sept. 25, 2008

** Reply to note from "Carlton Samuels" <carlton.samuels(a)uwimona.edu.jm> Wed, 24 Sep 2008 23:14:02 -0500 > In summary, we are looking for a way to ensure that registrants have > a reasonably and fairly priced way to retain a domain name, even if > it had inadvertently expired in the recent past. We are essentially > looking at it from two main perspectives: > > - Impact on registrants who lose control of their domain name, > potentially with significant financial or other impact; and > - Impact on users who can no longer access web sites and services > that they rely on. I partially agree on this. I don't think Danny's statement does not go far enough. I am of the opinion that a registrar MUST NOT have an ability to participate on the auction or sale of those domain names! Such domain name MUST be placed back into the available pool, so that ANY other person is able to register that domain name. Without such prohibition, the playing field is not even. ------------------------------------------------------ Who is General Error and why is he reading my drive?

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Redemption Grace Period and associated rights
by Alan Greenberg Sept. 25, 2008

Sept. 25, 2008

Four weeks ago, Danny Younger raised the issue of the Redemption Grace Period (RGP) with the North American RALO. A copy of his e-mail can be found at https://st.icann.org/alac/index.cgi?redemption_grace_period_danny_younger. In essence, about six years ago, the RGP was proposed and implemented to allow a registrant to recover a domain name after it had expired and been deleted by the registrar. The reason for the deletion could be that a registrant did not receive the required notices of expiry, or they were not sent, or they simply forgot. Under the RGP, when a registry (such as VeriSign for .com) receives a request to delete a name, it is put in a hold status for 30 days. During this period, the name does not resolve, and if nothing else had caught the registrant's eye before, this usually will. During this time, a registrant can recover the name for a fee. The fee is currently set $40 but can and generally is marked up by the registrar. The RGP was implemented voluntarily as a Registry Service by all of the non-sponsored gTLDs. A registrar is not required to offer the RGP however, so the existence of this registry service did not guarantee that a registrant who neglected to renew could effectively use the RGP. It was hoped that as Registrar contracts were renegotiated, the requirement to make the RGP available would be added, but this did not happen. A consensus policy could have been created which would force them to offer the service, but this also did not happen. From the point of registries, domains automatically renew, but the registrar can reverse this retroactively during the "auto-renew grace period" (ARGP - typically 45 days). Since that time the situation has changed in that registrars have generally added conditions in their registrant agreements that give the registrar the right to transfer or sell or auction an expired domain to some other party (the so called "direct transfer" right). Often, during the AGRP, they may monetize the domain temporarily to see if it attracts much traffic and therefore has commercial value. During this time, they *may* be willing to sell the domain back to the original registrant. The price may depend on how much traffic they saw in the interim. Once a value is determined, the domain may be kept by the registrar (perhaps via a related company), or sold or auctioned. Since the domain is never actually deleted at the registry (it still maintains its original creation date), it never gets a chance to enter the RGP. As complicated as this may sound, it is the short version. There was an excellent tutorial on these practices given at the Lisbon ICANN meeting in March 2007. A transcript can be found at http://www.icann.org/en/meetings/lisbon/transcript-tutorial-expiring-25mar0…. The NARALO has agreed that this is a good project to take on, and has requested that the ALAC pursue it. The issue was on the ALAC meeting agenda of September 9, but unfortunately time ran out before we got to it. However, since that meeting there have been a number of conversations that indicate that this is an issue of importance and that there is sufficient interest among At-Large that ALAC should pursue it. In summary, we are looking for a way to ensure that registrants have a reasonably and fairly priced way to retain a domain name, even if it had inadvertently expired in the recent past. We are essentially looking at it from two main perspectives: - Impact on registrants who lose control of their domain name, potentially with significant financial or other impact; and - Impact on users who can no longer access web sites and services that they rely on. If we an find sufficient interest in At-Large and the RALOs to support this project, I would like to see the ALAC request an Issues Report from ICANN staff, which is the first step in initiating a Policy Development Process (PDP). Following the delivery of the Issues report, the GNSO Council would need to vote to decide to initiate a PDP. Informal conversations indicate there may be reasonable support for this on Council; assuming ICANN staff decide that this is an issues within the scope of the GNSO, initiation requires only a >33% vote. If we work quickly, I believe we can formally decide to proceed at the ALAC's October 14th meeting, and issue the request for the Issues Report in Cairo. I solicit general statements of support from ALSs and RALOs, and a few volunteers to help work on the request. Volunteers must either be knowledgeable in the issues being discussed, or be willing to learn very quickly. Alan PS For this who want to understand more of the history of the RGP, you can refer to: http://www.icann.org/en/registrars/redemption-proposal-14feb02.htm http://www.icann.org/en/registrars/redemption-supplement-20feb02.htm http://www.icann.org/en/meetings/accra/redemption-topic.htm http://www.icann.org/en/minutes/prelim-report-14mar02.htm#RedemptionGracePe…

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