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Draft GNSO Improvements Statement from At-Large: Comments due by 31st March 1200 UTC
by At-Large Staff March 25, 2008

March 25, 2008

Dear Members of the At-Large Community: I have the pleasure to provide you with the attached draft statement of the ALAC Ad-Hoc Working Group on GNSO Improvements. It is intended that the statement should be transmitted by the At-Large Advisory Committee to the Board of Directors of ICANN as a formal statement on behalf of the At-Large community. In order to do this, the following timeline has been established by the Working Group: 1. At-Large community views on the document are requested to be received not later than 31st March at 1200 UTC; 2. The Working Group will meet on 31st March to revise the statement as necessary to reflect the views of the community; 3. The Chair of the ALAC will transmit the finalised statement to the Board of Directors directly after it is finalised. We are requested to point out to you that the consultation on the GNSO Improvements proposal has been extended to 25th April 2008. As a result, the attached statement once finalised will also be transmitted to that public consultation. The consultation is open to all concerned and it is the hope of the ALAC that many members of the community will take this opportunity to comment directly. The consultation can be found at: http://www.icann.org/public_comment/#gnso-improvements-report-2008. Comments may be sent directly to gnso-improvements-report-2008(a)icann.org. The comments of others may be found at: http://forum.icann.org/lists/gnso-improvements-report-2008/ -- Regards, ICANN At-Large Staff email: staff(a)atlarge.icann.org

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AT-LARGE ANNOUNCEMENT: Resignation of ALAC Vice-Chair
by At-Large Staff March 18, 2008

March 18, 2008

Dear Community: The Chair of the ALAC has requested that the At-Large Staff notify you that Robert Guerra has resigned his office as Vice-Chair of the At-Large Advisory Committee for personal reasons. The ALAC wishes to convey its thanks for his work in this position until his resignation. Robert remains an elected Member of the ALAC from North America and the representative of At-Large to the Security and Stability Advisory Committee. This situation is provided for in Rule 9.1 of the Rules of Procedure of the ALAC as adopted in October 2007: ³If for any reason whatsoever (including lack of quorum, lack or loss of eligibility requirements, resignation, or recall) an officer position becomes vacant before the end of the term, the Chair will promptly start an election to fill it, by sending an ³election call² message and starting the procedure from rule 9.1² In conformity with Rule 9.1 an election call message from the Chair will be forthcoming, which will provide the relevant details of the process to elect a replacement co-Vice-Chair. -- Regards, ICANN At-Large Staff email: staff(a)atlarge.icann.org

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I find this to be very annoying
by Gareth Shearman March 16, 2008

March 16, 2008

I don't suppose it is illegal, but if you look them up on Google, you will find them labelled as a scam. One of our customers brought the attached to us when he came in to pay for another year's service. It is designed in a very sneaky way to look like an official communication. Apparently there is a US counterpart to this company. Have any of the rest of you come across this group? Thanks, Gareth

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Next Steps: What Happens When a Registrar Ceases Business Operation
by Danny Younger March 15, 2008

March 15, 2008

Dear Mike, and NARALO members, I was reminded of the Delhi Terminated Registrar Workshop when I recently started looking for domain registration services for a new project... I had thought of using Rick Wesson's firm (Alice's Registry) as I had appreciated Rick's principled stand on many issues. So I went to the list of accredited registrars to look up the contact details. Alice's Registry still appears to be accredited, but the contact phone number is disconnected. When I went to the website, all I saw was a pay-per-click parking site with a notice by Sedo that the domain ar.com may be for sale by its owner. Checking the monthly registry reports, I see that Alice's Registry has 877 .com names still under management. As all indications are that Alice's Registry may soon cease operations (if this hasn't happened already), I wondered as to the next steps in this process... In Delhi, Registrar Liaison Manager Mike Zupke stated: "one of the tasks that we've taken on is creating a procedure that we can make public, so that people can see exactly how we intend to address these situations going forward. Obviously, this is the first significant public comment effort in that, but we intend to, of course, continue that dialogue with the community." Inasmuch as the current situation concerns a North American registrar, perhaps we can prevail upon Mike to provide the NARALO with an overview of the procedure that Staff is presently contemplating... Over time, some registrar failures are inevitable; clearly we need to have an agreed-upon process in place so that registants aren't unduly impacted. Mike, if you don't mind, can you tell us of the next steps that are being considered, and if the data from Alice's Registry has been escrowed? regards, Danny ____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping

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Sign Up for Contractual Compliance Newsletter
by Danny Younger March 15, 2008

March 15, 2008

ICANN Announcement: 14 March 2008 MARINA DEL REY, Calif.: The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is about to launch the monthly Contractual Compliance Digest, a newsletter offering a snapshot of the wide variety of contractual compliance work ICANN does. The Digest will give up to date information and statistics on our contract compliance activities. The first issue will highlight monthly enforcement notices, reports on recent audit activities, and an update on the Registrar Whois Data Accuracy Study. To subscribe to this Digest, simply click on the link below and provide the requested information: http://www.icann.org/newsletter/ ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ

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NARALO 2009 Regional Meeting
by Evan Leibovitch March 14, 2008

March 14, 2008

Hello all, I noticed, while going through the calendar, that there is no ICANN meeting scheduled for the North American Region until Oct 17-23, 2010. Usually ALSs are invited to have their regional in-person meets at the local ICANN meeting. It is my recollection that, if there is no meeting taking place in a region during a calendar year, policy allows that ALSs of that region are entitled to have an in-person regional meeting. I believe there is a precedent already, a meeting held February 2007 by APRALO in Bali. (I also seem to recall that a proposal last year for a EURALO meeting for Geneva was refused...) In 2007 we met in San Juan, and I anticipate we will all be at the Summit in November this year. However, there will be no North American ICANN meeting in calendar 2009, and I would like everyone to start thinking about a good time and place to hold a regional ALS meeting in Sep/Oct of next year (which would be halfway between the Summit and the Oct 2010 meeting). Because the number of people involved is so small, it could be held anywhere. Perhaps adjacent to another conference? Once upon a time there was a plan to meet, before signing the MOU, at Consumers Union in Yonkers NY. Beau, is that offer still open? There' s no rush, but I just want to toss the idea out to make sure it's not forgotten, in the ICANN budget or otherwise. Nick, what have other regions done in planning this kind of meeting? How much advance notice is needed? - Evan

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10 March Teleconference Meeting Minutes
by At-Large Staff March 14, 2008

March 14, 2008

Dear Members, The Meeting Minutes and Action Items for the 10 March Teleconferences have been uploaded and can be found at the Meeting Page. https://st.icann.org/naralo/index.cgi?10_march_2008 -- Regards, ICANN At-Large Staff email: staff(a)atlarge.icann.org

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URGENT: Statement on Domain Name Front Running
by At-Large Staff March 13, 2008

March 13, 2008

Dear Members: The statement reproduced below on the practice known as ³Domain Name Front Running² was approved by the NARALO on 10 March 2008. The ALAC reviewed this statement on 11th March 2008, and by decision of the ALAC you are kindly asked to register any objections to this statement not later than Monday 17 March at 1200 UTC after it will be considered approved by the ALAC and transmitted to the Board by the Chair at her convenience. The statement may be found at the following URL in addition to being reproduced below: https://st.icann.org/naralo/index.cgi?statement_to_the_icann_board_on_domain _front_running Statement on Domain Name Front Running Presented to NARALO by electronic Mail, 1 March 2008 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 (see footnote 1 at the bottom of the page) 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. (see Footnote 2). 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 3 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. -- Regards, ICANN At-Large Staff email: staff(a)atlarge.icann.org

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Support by ALAC of Danny's letter to the Board
by Alan Greenberg March 13, 2008

March 13, 2008

RALOs have been (or will be - not sure) asked for their support or opposition with a deadline for a decision of Monday, March 17th 12:00 UTC. My feeling (which of course has zero value) is that there will be general (or unanimous) support. If you can defer sending it until that time, it would be appreciated. If you feel it needs to go out prior to that, please send it and ALAC will affirm whatever support is approved after the fact. Alan

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Report on the OneDay AtLarge workshop
by At-Large Staff March 12, 2008

March 12, 2008

Dear all, Please find attached the Report on the ³OneDay ALAC/AtLarge² workshop that took place at the ICANN New Delhi conference. -- Regards, ICANN At-Large Staff email: staff(a)atlarge.icann.org

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