[council] ICANN Opens Comment Period on Proposed Add Grace Period Modifications for NeuStar and Afilias

["GNSO.SECRETARIAT@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <gnso.secretariat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-27feb08.htm

ICANN Opens Comment Period on Proposed Add Grace Period Modifications 
for NeuStar and Afilias
27 February 2008

ICANN is today opening public comment periods on requests submitted by 
NeuStar, the .BIZ registry, and Afilias, the .INFO registry, to modify 
terms regarding the add grace period (AGP) in their respective registry 
agreements.
On 5 February 2008, NeuStar and Afilias submitted separate but similar 
requests through the Registry Services Evaluation Process to modify the 
AGP in their respective TLDs in order “to address the excessive delete 
problem” (i.e. domain tasting) in .BIZ and .INFO. Currently there are no 
limitations on the number of deletions that a registrar can process and 
receive a refund during the five-day AGP. The proposed service would 
limit the number of AGP deletions where a registrar could receive a full 
registration fee credit each month: either 50 per month or 10% of that 
registrar’s net new monthly domain name registrations, whichever is 
greater. A registrar would be permitted to delete as many names as it 
wished during the five-day AGP, receiving credit throughout the month. 
However, at the end of the .BIZ or .INFO normal monthly billing cycle 
the Registrar’s account would be debited for the full value of the 
domain name registrations that exceeded the month’s set threshold.
As provided for by existing consensus policy 
(http://www.icann.org/registries/rsep/rsep.html), ICANN has undertaken a 
preliminary determination to determine whether the proposed 
modifications might raise significant security or stability, or 
competition issues. ICANN's determination is that the proposed 
modifications by NeuStar and Afilias do not raise such issues.
The next step in evaluation is that (because implementation of the 
proposals would require changes to the .BIZ and .INFO Registry 
Agreements) ICANN will post the proposed amendments, solicit public 
comment and refer the proposals to the ICANN Board for consideration.
A copy of the proposed NeuStar amendment is available here [PDF, 25K], 
and a copy of the proposed Afilias amendment is available here [PDF, 
25K]. Both amendments provide for changes to Appendix 7, Section 3.1.1. 
Comments on the NeuStar amendment submitted to 
neustar-agp-proposal@xxxxxxxxx will be considered until 23:59 UTC 28 
March 2008 and may be viewed at 
http://forum.icann.org/lists/neustar-agp-proposal/. Comments on the 
Afilias amendment submitted to afilias-agp-proposal@xxxxxxxxx will be 
considered until 23:59 UTC 28 March 2008 and may be viewed at 
http://forum.icann.org/lists/afilias-agp-proposal/. Please keep in mind 
that these are separate proposals with separate public comment forums.
All documentation regarding the NeuStar proposal is available at 
http://www.icann.org/registries/rsep/submitted_app.html#2008001, while 
documentation on the Afilias proposal is available at 
http://www.icann.org/registries/rsep/submitted_app.html#2008002
--
Glen de Saint Géry
GNSO Secretariat - ICANN
gnso.secretariat[at]gnso.icann.org
http://gnso.icann.org