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Every
time someone asks me
what
the biggest threats to the domain
industry are I always put attempts by covetous
parties to change ICANN policies (or even
the laws of the land) to make it easier for
them to take your domains without
paying for them at or near the top of the
list. Well, they are at it again - this
time trying to slip one such trojan horse
into the .net contract with ICANN that Verisign
has up for renewal.
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In
this case, ICANN's Commercial and Business Users Constituency
is proposing that .net be required to adopt
some " rights protection" mechanisms from the
new gTLD program (even though
that program hasn't even been
implemented yet!), including the Uniform Rapid Suspension
(URS) system that could
prove to be enormously damaging to
domain owners. If this plan, which would
open the door for valuable domains to be
suspended, and even transferred, based
on a proceeding that costs only $300,
slips through unchallenged, the
untested URS could be available to
complainants against .net domains as
soon as July 1st. Even worse, you
can then expect it to be imposed on
.com next year when that contract
comes up again. |
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I'm
sure it is no coincidence that this proposal was
made late in the game - ICANN"s public
comment period on the .net contract renewal ends
tomorrow (Tuesday, May 10). So, if you want
to help head off this latest assault on your
assets, you must file your own comment by
the end of the day Tuesday by sending an
e-mail to [email protected]
(as comments come in you can view them here).
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The Internet
Commerce Association's Legal
Counsel, Phil Corwin, has already
posted a strong public
objection to the .net
contract being altered in this way
(other comments in that discussion can
be viewed here,
including the original objectionable proposal
from Mark Monitor's Director of
Product Marketing, Elisa Cooper,
that URS be inserted into the .net |
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ICA
Legal Counsel Phil Corwin |
contract
upon renewal). Corwin wrote, "There has never been any suggestion in the debate on RPMs
(rights protection mechanisms) for new gTLDs that
whatever was adopted would be immediately imposed on the incumbent gTLDs via
the contract renewal process. That position was never even considered, much
less supported, by the RAPWG (Registration Abuse Policies Working Group). And imposing URS right now on
.net (and by implication, on .com next year) is
at complete odds with a balanced UDRP reform
process that is informed by, but not necessarily bound to, the experience with
new RPMs at the new gTLDs."
Corwin
added, "To be clear, ICA has consistently advocated that the goal should be to have
equivalent RPMs across all gTLDs so that registrants have the same rights and
responsibilities throughout the DNS. But
we oppose the immediate imposition of
URS on .net, the second largest gTLD and third |
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largest overall, through a
contract renewal process where those changes would take effect in
less than two months - when we don't even know what the final form of those RPMs will be... much less have any real world experience
with their workings, effectiveness, and potential for abuse." |
So,
again, if you want to head this extraordinarily
bad idea off at the pass, email your own comment
to ICANN at [email protected]
letting them know you do not want untested
rules developed for new gTLDS to be applied
to existing TLDs, particularly through an attempted
last minute end run like this one meant to
bypass debate on a critical issue and
proper vetting of the URS system before it is
applied to any gTLD.
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