March 2006 - council - lists.icann.org

Wellington schedule and agenda
by GNSO.SECRETARIAT＠GNSO.ICANN.ORG March 7, 2006

March 7, 2006

[To: council[at]gnso.icann.org; ga[at]gnso.icann.org] [To: liaison6c[at]gnso.icann.org; announce[at]gnso.icann.org] Dear All, Please note that the Wellington schedule and agenda are published at: http://icann.org/meetings/wellington/#ScheduleandAgenda A detailed agenda specifically for the GNSO Council meetings will be sent out very shortly. Kind regards, Glen Glen de Saint Géry GNSO Secretariat - ICANN gnso.secretariat[at]gnso.icann.org http://gnso.icann.org

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Fwd: EU commision examines .com contract
by Mawaki Chango March 7, 2006

March 7, 2006

FYI --- Iliya Nickelt <iliya(a)GMX.DE> wrote: > Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2006 09:31:05 +0100 > From: Iliya Nickelt <iliya(a)GMX.DE> > Subject: EU commision examines .com contract > To: NCUC-DISCUSS(a)LISTSERV.SYR.EDU > > FYI: A speaker from the competition directorate of the EU > commission > (http://europa.eu.int/comm/competition) has confirmed that they are > > examining the ICANN verisign .com contract, apparently stimulated > by > CFIT. I don't think it has been widely noticed yet, as this > interesting > bit of info was researched by Monika Ermert from heise and the > article is > published in German. > (http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/70352) I > did not find any comment at the eu site. Investigation does not > mean that > they will take any steps, of course, but still interesting. > > --iliya >

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[Fwd: Wellington Hotel]
by GNSO.SECRETARIAT＠GNSO.ICANN.ORG March 5, 2006

March 5, 2006

Dear Council Members, Please see the message below and please act promptly. All council members that have informed me of their dates are on the hotel list, with the exception of 4 council members that will not be attending. Thank you very much. Kind regards, Glen -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Wellington Hotel Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2006 20:02:44 -0800 From: Michael Evans <evans(a)icann.org> To: 'GNSO.SECRETARIAT(a)GNSO.ICANN.ORG' <gnso.secretariat(a)gnso.icann.org> CC: 'Diane Schroeder' <diane.schroeder(a)icann.org> Dear Glen, Please send the following message to the people on your Wellington hotel list. Exemptions are as follows: (Marilyn, Tony Harris, Lucy Nichols, and Ken Stubbs are exempt as there reservation falls under the Nom-Com) Dear GNSO Council members. A hotel room has been reserved under your name at the Intercontinental Hotel in Wellington for the dates you provided. Due to requirements from the local hotel, a credit card is required to hold your reservation. Please e-mail the local hotel coordinator (*laura(a)conferenceonline.co.nz <mailto:laura@conferenceonline.co.nz>)* with your credit card details by Tues. March 7^th to avoid your reservation from being cancelled. Please include, once again, the dates of your arrival and departure from the hotel to be sure that the dates are correct. Beginning Tues. March 7^th , penalties may apply for changes to your reservation or cancellations. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your understanding and cooperation. Best regards, Michael Evans -- Glen de Saint Géry GNSO Secretariat - ICANN gnso.secretariat[at]gnso.icann.org http://gnso.icann.org

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Agenda Request
by Ross Rader March 5, 2006

March 5, 2006

Bruce, fellow Councillors, At our next meeting, I would like to propose the initiation of a new policy development process concerning the Redemption Grace Period and request that this topic be added to our agenda. It has recently come to my attention recently that the current implementation (detailed at http://www.icann.org/bucharest/redemption-topic.htm) is an optional registry service which may not be meeting the needs of registrants as originally envisaged when it was implemented. Recent press reports (see below) and registrant complaints indicate that names are being lost despite the implementation of this registry service. I have spent a lot of time considering whether or not Council can afford to take on additional work given our current workload and have come to the view that because of the widespread support for the Redemption Grace Period amongst the constituencies (as documented on the ICANN website) and the pre-existence of strong policy and implementation proposals that already have consensus support of the stakeholders, we should be able to confirm the Redemption Grace Period proposals as consensus policy fairly quickly and without much additional effort or contentious debate. Because of the pre-existing consensus on this issue, I will propose to move this forward without creating a task force per Annex A, Section 8 of the ICANN Bylaws once we have agreed to initiate a PDP and been provided with an issues report by the staff. (http://www.icann.org/general/bylaws.htm#AnnexA-8) i.e. the fast-track. In the very least, creation of an issues report will gather up substantive data on this subject and allow us to make an informed decision regarding whether or not circumstances like those detailed below are widespread enough to justify launching a full-fledged PDP. Your consideration of this matter would be extremely appreciated. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to drop me a note (or give me a ring). -ross 'Drop Catchers' Buy and Sell Web Names Others Let Slip By DAVID KESMODEL Wall Street Journal February 22, 2006; Page B1 Last month, Chicago real-estate agent Judy Orr discovered that a Web site she used to showcase area homes had gone off-line. It turned out she had failed to pay the $9 annual renewal fee for her Web address, oak-lawn-real-estate.com. But getting her site back online wasn't as easy as she had hoped: Another company had snapped up the domain name and wanted nearly $2,500 to return it to her. "I was sick to my stomach," Ms. Orr says. It took two years of work to build up the site so it would rank prominently in Google's search results, and that time "went down the drain," she says. The new owner of the address was Lease Domains Inc., which is run by a 21-year-old graduate student, Anthos Chrysanthou, who works out of his parents' house in a Chicago suburb. Mr. Chrysanthou says his two-year-old company owns more than 2,000 domain names, many obtained through a process called "drop catching" -- snagging names owners have let expire, either accidentally or because they no longer want them. "I liken the whole situation to tangible real estate," says Mr. Chrysanthou, who is pursuing his master's in business administration at St. Xavier University in Chicago. "If you're not paying your mortgage or your taxes on it, it's going to get taken away." Mr. Chrysanthou is one of hundreds of drop catchers who either resell names or use them for Web sites loaded with advertisements. (Ms. Orr's former site now features text ads for real estate.) Many drop catchers have learned the trade in the past year, seeking a piece of the booming market for domains spurred by a surge in online advertising. The practice also has gotten a lift from providers of domain services, such as SnapNames.com Inc., Pool.com Inc. and GoDaddy.com Inc., which have introduced tools aimed at helping people grab expiring domains. The services circulate lists each day showing which domains are about to go up for grabs. Auctions are held for particularly in-demand names, and prices can go sky-high: A1.com sold for $260,250 in December, after its previous owner let the registration lapse. Drop catching "has pretty much changed completely in a few years' time," says Michael Berkens, who runs MostWantedDomains.com, owner of about 45,000 domains, which range from 4nudepictures.com to 401kplans.com, out of his Fort Lauderdale, Fla., home. "There's more people," he says, and "prices have just escalated." DNJournal.com, a publication that tracks the domain industry, reported 2,291 sales of expired domains in auctions last year, with winning bids totaling a combined $11.5 million. That was up from 885 sales totaling $4.2 million a year earlier. Auctioneers don't report all deals to DNJournal, and the site doesn't track deals valued at less than $500. Roughly 20,000 expired domain names become available each day, according to industry executives. While many were consciously discarded by their owners, others, like Ms. Orr's, are the product of a domain-registration system that many users don't understand well. When a user registers a domain name, it can be reserved for as many as 10 years, typically for $80. But many choose a one-year registration because it is less expensive, often about $10, and because they may not want the site for a longer period. At the end of the year, the domain registrar generally sends renewal notices to the owner, but such messages can be missed if the owner has changed email addresses in that time. Under rules administered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the group that oversees the assignment of Web addresses, domain registrars such as GoDaddy and Network Solutions LLC have as many as 45 days after the expiration date to notify the official domain registry whether a name is being renewed or deleted. Typically, registrars have given users a grace period -- sometimes as long as 45 days -- to renew their name. If a name is deleted, ICANN guidelines then call for a 30-day "redemption grace period," during which the original owner can still claim the name. If there is no claim in the redemption period, the name is dropped from the registry after a five-day holding period, and anyone is entitled to seek it. For the .com and .net registries, managed by VeriSign Inc., names drop starting around 2 p.m. Eastern each day, all year long. What follows is a process that some in the industry call "pounding." As the names drop, Internet companies that help users acquire expired names send rapid computer commands to the registry, seeking to grab the most valuable names. It is "a mad rush," says Dan Rubin, who runs justdropped.com, which helps people identify and acquire expired domains. Registries for other domain suffixes drop names at different times of day. The drop process underwent a key shift starting in late 2004. That is when SnapNames started a new service for grabbing domains. The company has signed exclusive agreements with more than a half-dozen registrars, including Network Solutions and Moniker.com, under which the registrars transfer expired domains to SnapNames, and SnapNames auctions them off. That way, names that people are interested in don't go through the traditional drop process that is open to anyone. GoDaddy, the largest domain registrar, has introduced its own auction service for expired names that were registered with it, as have other registrars, as they seek a cut of the action for expired names. They begin auctions for names even before the names have officially expired but warn auction participants that the original owner could still redeem the name. For domain owners, the new system means names can be grabbed from them even more quickly than they could before. Instead of going through the full deletion cycle -- which went as long as 75 days -- names are being transferred to new owners in 30 to 45 days. Paul Twomey, chief executive of ICANN, says some people in the domain industry recently have raised concerns that the guidelines governing expired names are "being utilized in ways that were not originally intended." But Mr. Twomey says no one has proposed a formal change in policy to address the issue. Ms. Orr's name, oak-lawn-real-estate.com, is one of those that was transferred before going through the full deletion process, says Jay Westerdal, who runs Name Intelligence Inc., a Bellevue, Wash., company that tracks the industry. Tim Ruiz, vice president of domain services for GoDaddy, which transferred the name, says, "We make every attempt to give ample opportunity for registrants to renew." He says the company gives registrants 30 days to claim a name after it has expired. If a corporation loses a domain name that it believes is copyrighted or trademarked, it can seek to recover the name by appealing to an arbitration panel under ICANN's dispute-resolution policy. It also could take the domain's new owner to court, though that can be more expensive. Ms. Orr says she lost her site's name, which wasn't copyrighted or trademarked, because she made the mistake of relying on her Web-hosting company to keep track of her registration. She says she didn't see renewal notices from GoDaddy because it had an old email address for her. Ms. Orr plans to use another site -- oak-lawn-il.com -- to replace the one she lost.

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GNSO Council Dinner with the Board on Sunday evening 26 March 2006
by Bruce Tonkin March 4, 2006

March 4, 2006

Hello All, Diane Schroeder has confirmed that "the board would be pleased to have dinner with the GNSO Council on Sunday evening" for Sunday 26 March 2006 in Wellington. I will see if we can arrange this as more of a "working" dinner - ie with the ability to discuss the topics that were raised on the last Council call. Regards, Bruce Tonkin

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Re: [council] Agenda Request
by Marilyn Cade March 4, 2006

March 4, 2006

Let me lend my support to this. I have a special fondness for protecting registrants and welcome this move. I am sure that GAC members will be positive about the responsible initiation by the council. Regatds, marilyn -----Original Message----- From: Ross Rader <ross(a)tucows.com> Date: Fri, 03 Mar 2006 15:56:47 To:GNSO Council <council(a)gnso.icann.org> Subject: [council] Agenda Request Bruce, fellow Councillors, At our next meeting, I would like to propose the initiation of a new policy development process concerning the Redemption Grace Period and request that this topic be added to our agenda. It has recently come to my attention recently that the current implementation (detailed at http://www.icann.org/bucharest/redemption-topic.htm) is an optional registry service which may not be meeting the needs of registrants as originally envisaged when it was implemented. Recent press reports (see below) and registrant complaints indicate that names are being lost despite the implementation of this registry service. I have spent a lot of time considering whether or not Council can afford to take on additional work given our current workload and have come to the view that because of the widespread support for the Redemption Grace Period amongst the constituencies (as documented on the ICANN website) and the pre-existence of strong policy and implementation proposals that already have consensus support of the stakeholders, we should be able to confirm the Redemption Grace Period proposals as consensus policy fairly quickly and without much additional effort or contentious debate. Because of the pre-existing consensus on this issue, I will propose to move this forward without creating a task force per Annex A, Section 8 of the ICANN Bylaws once we have agreed to initiate a PDP and been provided with an issues report by the staff. (http://www.icann.org/general/bylaws.htm#AnnexA-8) i.e. the fast-track. In the very least, creation of an issues report will gather up substantive data on this subject and allow us to make an informed decision regarding whether or not circumstances like those detailed below are widespread enough to justify launching a full-fledged PDP. Your consideration of this matter would be extremely appreciated. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to drop me a note (or give me a ring). -ross 'Drop Catchers' Buy and Sell Web Names Others Let Slip By DAVID KESMODEL Wall Street Journal February 22, 2006; Page B1 Last month, Chicago real-estate agent Judy Orr discovered that a Web site she used to showcase area homes had gone off-line. It turned out she had failed to pay the $9 annual renewal fee for her Web address, oak-lawn-real-estate.com. But getting her site back online wasn't as easy as she had hoped: Another company had snapped up the domain name and wanted nearly $2,500 to return it to her. "I was sick to my stomach," Ms. Orr says. It took two years of work to build up the site so it would rank prominently in Google's search results, and that time "went down the drain," she says. The new owner of the address was Lease Domains Inc., which is run by a 21-year-old graduate student, Anthos Chrysanthou, who works out of his parents' house in a Chicago suburb. Mr. Chrysanthou says his two-year-old company owns more than 2,000 domain names, many obtained through a process called "drop catching" -- snagging names owners have let expire, either accidentally or because they no longer want them. "I liken the whole situation to tangible real estate," says Mr. Chrysanthou, who is pursuing his master's in business administration at St. Xavier University in Chicago. "If you're not paying your mortgage or your taxes on it, it's going to get taken away." Mr. Chrysanthou is one of hundreds of drop catchers who either resell names or use them for Web sites loaded with advertisements. (Ms. Orr's former site now features text ads for real estate.) Many drop catchers have learned the trade in the past year, seeking a piece of the booming market for domains spurred by a surge in online advertising. The practice also has gotten a lift from providers of domain services, such as SnapNames.com Inc., Pool.com Inc. and GoDaddy.com Inc., which have introduced tools aimed at helping people grab expiring domains. The services circulate lists each day showing which domains are about to go up for grabs. Auctions are held for particularly in-demand names, and prices can go sky-high: A1.com sold for $260,250 in December, after its previous owner let the registration lapse. Drop catching "has pretty much changed completely in a few years' time," says Michael Berkens, who runs MostWantedDomains.com, owner of about 45,000 domains, which range from 4nudepictures.com to 401kplans.com, out of his Fort Lauderdale, Fla., home. "There's more people," he says, and "prices have just escalated." DNJournal.com, a publication that tracks the domain industry, reported 2,291 sales of expired domains in auctions last year, with winning bids totaling a combined $11.5 million. That was up from 885 sales totaling $4.2 million a year earlier. Auctioneers don't report all deals to DNJournal, and the site doesn't track deals valued at less than $500. Roughly 20,000 expired domain names become available each day, according to industry executives. While many were consciously discarded by their owners, others, like Ms. Orr's, are the product of a domain-registration system that many users don't understand well. When a user registers a domain name, it can be reserved for as many as 10 years, typically for $80. But many choose a one-year registration because it is less expensive, often about $10, and because they may not want the site for a longer period. At the end of the year, the domain registrar generally sends renewal notices to the owner, but such messages can be missed if the owner has changed email addresses in that time. Under rules administered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the group that oversees the assignment of Web addresses, domain registrars such as GoDaddy and Network Solutions LLC have as many as 45 days after the expiration date to notify the official domain registry whether a name is being renewed or deleted. Typically, registrars have given users a grace period -- sometimes as long as 45 days -- to renew their name. If a name is deleted, ICANN guidelines then call for a 30-day "redemption grace period," during which the original owner can still claim the name. If there is no claim in the redemption period, the name is dropped from the registry after a five-day holding period, and anyone is entitled to seek it. For the .com and .net registries, managed by VeriSign Inc., names drop starting around 2 p.m. Eastern each day, all year long. What follows is a process that some in the industry call "pounding." As the names drop, Internet companies that help users acquire expired names send rapid computer commands to the registry, seeking to grab the most valuable names. It is "a mad rush," says Dan Rubin, who runs justdropped.com, which helps people identify and acquire expired domains. Registries for other domain suffixes drop names at different times of day. The drop process underwent a key shift starting in late 2004. That is when SnapNames started a new service for grabbing domains. The company has signed exclusive agreements with more than a half-dozen registrars, including Network Solutions and Moniker.com, under which the registrars transfer expired domains to SnapNames, and SnapNames auctions them off. That way, names that people are interested in don't go through the traditional drop process that is open to anyone. GoDaddy, the largest domain registrar, has introduced its own auction service for expired names that were registered with it, as have other registrars, as they seek a cut of the action for expired names. They begin auctions for names even before the names have officially expired but warn auction participants that the original owner could still redeem the name. For domain owners, the new system means names can be grabbed from them even more quickly than they could before. Instead of going through the full deletion cycle -- which went as long as 75 days -- names are being transferred to new owners in 30 to 45 days. Paul Twomey, chief executive of ICANN, says some people in the domain industry recently have raised concerns that the guidelines governing expired names are "being utilized in ways that were not originally intended." But Mr. Twomey says no one has proposed a formal change in policy to address the issue. Ms. Orr's name, oak-lawn-real-estate.com, is one of those that was transferred before going through the full deletion process, says Jay Westerdal, who runs Name Intelligence Inc., a Bellevue, Wash., company that tracks the industry. Tim Ruiz, vice president of domain services for GoDaddy, which transferred the name, says, "We make every attempt to give ample opportunity for registrants to renew." He says the company gives registrants 30 days to claim a name after it has expired. If a corporation loses a domain name that it believes is copyrighted or trademarked, it can seek to recover the name by appealing to an arbitration panel under ICANN's dispute-resolution policy. It also could take the domain's new owner to court, though that can be more expensive. Ms. Orr says she lost her site's name, which wasn't copyrighted or trademarked, because she made the mistake of relying on her Web-hosting company to keep track of her registration. She says she didn't see renewal notices from GoDaddy because it had an old email address for her. Ms. Orr plans to use another site -- oak-lawn-il.com -- to replace the one she lost. Regards, Marilyn Cade

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Registrar Statement on New gTLD Terms of Reference
by Ross Rader March 3, 2006

March 3, 2006

Please find attached the registrar statement on the new gTLD Terms of Reference. There is no material difference between this and the earlier submission, save and except the preamble which has been modified to provide you with a clear statement concerning how this submission qualifies as a formal constituency statement under the ICANN bylaws. I am concerned that despite my repeated clarifications for staff, that this submission continues to be mishandled. If there are any further concerns, I would prefer to hear about them before you bring the issue before council. -Ross

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GNSO Council teleconference MP3 recording 2 March 2006
by GNSO.SECRETARIAT＠GNSO.ICANN.ORG March 2, 2006

March 2, 2006

[To: ga[at]gnso.icann.org; announce[at]gnso.icann.org] [To: liaison6c[at]gnso.icann.org; council[at]gnso.icann.org] Please find the MP3 recording of the GNSO Council teleconference, held on March 2, 2006 at: http://gnso-audio.icann.org/GNSO-Council-20060302.mp3 http://gnso.icann.org/calendar/index.html#mar Happy listening! -- Glen de Saint Géry GNSO Secretariat - ICANN gnso.secretariat[at]gnso.icann.org http://gnso.icann.org

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GNSO Council motion 2 March 2006
by GNSO.SECRETARIAT＠GNSO.ICANN.ORG March 2, 2006

March 2, 2006

[To council[at]gnso.icann.org] Dear All, Ahead of complete minutes of the GNSO Council teleconference held on 2 March 2006, Council passed the following motion: "That Council approves the Terms of Reference for PDP-Feb06 as drafted with the insertion of the words "and core values" in the paragraph on Goal "The overall goal of this PDP therefore is to determine what policies are appropriate, for the long term future of gTLDs within the context of ICANN's mission "and core values," that relate to the issues identified in the specific terms of reference below. The motion carried with 17 votes in favour, 6 votes against Absent: Robin Gross, absent and excused: Ute Decker, Lucy Nichols, and Kiyoshi Tsuru had dropped off the call at the time of the vote. There were 18 Council members on the call. Glen de Saint Géry GNSO Secretariat - ICANN gnso.secretariat[at]gnso.icann.org http://gnso.icann.org

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Website for GNSO Review
by Bruce Tonkin March 2, 2006

March 2, 2006

Hello All, See: http://www.icann-gnsoreview.org/ Regards, Bruce Tonkin

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