President and CEO of ICANN, Dr Paul Twomey today called for major review of ICANN¹s Registrar Accreditation Agreements (RAA) and the Accreditation process. ³What has happened to registrants with RegisterFly.com has made it clear there must be comprehensive review of the registrar accreditation process and the content of the RAA² he said.
We should take care to separate the accreditation process with the content of the RAA. One of the reasons we have such robust competition at the registrar-level, with registrars now located in most all parts of the world, is that the registrar accreditation process is light-weight, relatively low cost, and predictable. If we place too many burdens on new market entrants, we may hurt the marketplace that currently provides many benefits (low cost, local registrars) to registrants. At the same time, you could certainly provide more hooks in the RAA to allow ICANN to more easily revoke accreditations and issue graduated penalties against registrars for infractions. Also, ICANN could simply start enforcing the existing escrow provisions of the RAA. The commercial failure of registrars and registries has been inevitable since ICANN was created. Now that it has happened, ICANN should be careful not to overreact to this Registerfly situation and create new regulations, processes, fees, etc. that might burden competition, increase the barriers to entry and, ultimately, hurt registrants. I would leave the accreditation process alone and focus the remedy on the existing escrow provisions and new enforcement provisions and graduated penalties in the RAA. -- Bret