Nick Ashton-Hart wrote:

Dear Members:

With respect to the research proposed by Wendy, I have the pleasure to provide you with some information which already exists in relation to this subject. Some of you may have seen it previously.

As to the request for the research work, as I mentioned to you on our teleconference, in order to evaluate the utility of spending the money to get research of the kind envisaged done, some further information is needed.

In particular, a proposal - not long, but a proposal - would be required, which at a minimum has all the questions the ALAC has in mind, and also what the ALAC proposes to do with the research data once it has been gathered.

My suggestions, building upon the request submitted earlier: The At-Large Advisory Committee has heard complaints from individuals about significant divergences among registrars on fees and practices regarding domain name transfer and expired domain name redemption. At least some registrants are not aware of these fees and practices at the time they register names. Before ALAC can analyze whether these fees and practices reflect a problem or the competitive market at work, we would like to get more information about them. We therefore ask staff to develop a plan for surveying accredited registrars on their practices. For each registrar, determine: Transfer-away: Is there a transfer-away fee for registrants to take their domain names to another registrar? If so, what is the fee? Is the transfer-away fee disclosed to the registrant at the time of registration? Where and how is such disclosure made? Is the fee subject to change during the registration period? Can registrants actually get the authcodes required to transfer domains? What is the process to get the authcode, including any fees charged? Redemption: What is the redemption fee for an expired domain name? Does the registrar itself register names its registrants have failed to renew? Once the ALAC has received and collated responses, we will use them to evaluate whether individual registrants are able to take advantage of the options provided them in consensus policies. Depending on the outcomes, we will analyze whether ALAC believes that more contractual regulation or a lighter touch is necessary to serve the needs of individual (and other) domain name registrants. Further suggestions? If ICANN's concern is expense, we could ask for a sample plus top 20, although study of the variance may be valuable. --Wendy -- Wendy Seltzer -- wendy@seltzer.org phone: +1.617.418.3456 / +44 (0)1865 287203 // cell: 07785 550361 Visiting Fellow, Oxford Internet Institute Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/seltzer.html http://www.chillingeffects.org/