http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/alac_atlarge-lists.icann.org/2008q1... 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.html http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/registrars/msg05130.html http://gnso.icann.org/mailing- lists/archives/registrars/msg05131.html<http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/registrars/msg05131.html> http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/registrars/msg05380.html http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/registrars/msg05626.html 2. 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... ) 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... ). 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]