[registrars] Registrars Constituency statement at Luxembourg about .NET Mods

["Bhavin Turakhia" <bhavin.t@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

Please find below a written copy of the statement of the Registrars
Constituency that I read out at the GNSO Public Forum and in front of the
ICANN Board at the open mike at Luxembourg.

The very next day, we recvd, as Tim Ruiz said, a statement from Vint Cerf,
stating that Verisign was willing to reopen the contract with regards to the
price caps. Will keep all of you posted on the progress

Thanks
Best Regards
Bhavin Turakhia
Founder, Chairman & CEO
Directi

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The statement of the registrars constituency is as follows -

"The Registrars trusted the ICANN Board and ICANN staff to act on behalf of
the ICANN community in negotiating a new contract with Verisign for .net.

Registrars consider there to be a breach of trust by the ICANN Board and the
ICANN staff in approving a contract with Verisign that contains significant
changes from the draft .net agreement posted on the ICANN website, without
ANY public consultation. We consider this not only a breach of trust but a
breach of the transparency provision of the ICANN bylaws that states that
ICANN shall operate in an open and transparent manner and consistent with
procedures designed to ensure fairness, specifically the bylaws state that
ICANN would have a public comment period incase of changes that
significantly effect 3rd parties and/or involve any imposition or changes to
pricing.

This is not the first time this has happened. When the new transfers policy
was implemented, the ICANN board aproved a change in the Verisign RRA, that
contained changes beyond purely for the purposes of the transfers policy
without any public consultation with the registrars. The ICANN staff later
on gave an undertaking to the registrars that this would not happen again.
It is the registrars view that this verbal undertaking was breached by the
ICANN staff.

The changes to the .net agreement that specifically concern registrars are:

- the maximum price ($4.25 including the ICANN registry fee) put forward by
Verisign in the .net application only applies for the first 18 months of the
new agreement. After that Verisign is free is set any price. We Registrars
are shocked by this and want the maximum price fixed for the duration of the
entire agreement.

- Verisign is excluded from new consensus policies and powers of the GNSO
are consderably reduced by contract. We Registrars are shocked by this and
insist that Verisign continue to be subject to consensus policies.

- ICANN negotiation powers during renewal are significantly curtailed in the
.net contract. We Registrars are shocked by this and require ICANN to retain
the ability to negotiate terms, including lower pricing at the time of
contract renewal.

We Registrars therefore insist for the following -
1. a re-opening and revision of the .net contract in view of the fact that
due process including the ICANN by-laws were not followed
2. assurances that due process will be followed in similar circusmtances in
the future
3. specific assurances that there is no way something similar would occur in
the dotCom contract

100% of the registrars who are present here have agreed to this statement.
The list is included below

ascio
anytimesites
ausregistry
tucows
enom
bulkregister
core
deusthce
directi
domainbank
domainsonly
apag
godaddy
wildwest
bluerazor
iholdings
melbourne it
name intelligence
name.com
namebay
network solutions
namesecure
srsplus
register.com
solis
domainclip
tuonome
dotster
markmonitor
gmo
nominalia
stargate
schlund