<<<
Chronological Index
>>> <<<
Thread Index
>>>
[council] Fwd: Redemption Grace Period and associated rights
- To: Council GNSO <council@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Subject: [council] Fwd: Redemption Grace Period and associated rights
- From: Alan Greenberg <alan.greenberg@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2008 11:20:40 -0400
- Cc: ALAC Working List <alac@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- List-id: council@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Sender: owner-council@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
As per my announcement today at the end of today's Council meeting,
following is the solicitation for support and help sent to the ALAC
and At-Large. It is not a definitive description of the issue, but
rather a hopefully understandable summary for this who do not spend
their days thinking about domain registration processes.
The overall intent is to end up in an environment where registrants
have a reasonable, predictable way to recover an expired domain
regardless of whether the reason for expiration was lack of
appropriate action on the part of the registrant, registrar or an act
of some other third party. My understanding is that this was the
original intent prior to the domain industry becoming such a large
business in its own right.
The ALAC is certainly interested in hearing from any constituencies
who support the initiative, and in particular, any individuals who
can help us craft the request for an Issues Report.
Alan
Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2008 01:37:26 -0400
To: At-Large Worldwide <at-large@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, ALAC
Working List <alac@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Alan Greenberg <alan.greenberg@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Redemption Grace Period and associated rights
Four weeks ago, Danny Younger raised the issue of the Redemption
Grace Period (RGP) with the North American RALO. A copy of his
e-mail can be found at
https://st.icann.org/alac/index.cgi?redemption_grace_period_danny_younger.
In essence, about six years ago, the RGP was proposed and
implemented to allow a registrant to recover a domain name after it
had expired and been deleted by the registrar. The reason for the
deletion could be that a registrant did not receive the required
notices of expiry, or they were not sent, or they simply forgot.
Under the RGP, when a registry (such as VeriSign for .com) receives
a request to delete a name, it is put in a hold status for 30 days.
During this period, the name does not resolve, and if nothing else
had caught the registrant's eye before, this usually will. During
this time, a registrant can recover the name for a fee. The fee is
currently set $40 but can and generally is marked up by the registrar.
The RGP was implemented voluntarily as a Registry Service by all of
the non-sponsored gTLDs. A registrar is not required to offer the
RGP however, so the existence of this registry service did not
guarantee that a registrant who neglected to renew could effectively
use the RGP. It was hoped that as Registrar contracts were
renegotiated, the requirement to make the RGP available would be
added, but this did not happen. A consensus policy could have been
created which would force them to offer the service, but this also
did not happen.
From the point of registries, domains automatically renew, but the
registrar can reverse this retroactively during the "auto-renew
grace period" (ARGP - typically 45 days).
Since that time the situation has changed in that registrars have
generally added conditions in their registrant agreements that give
the registrar the right to transfer or sell or auction an expired
domain to some other party (the so called "direct transfer" right).
Often, during the AGRP, they may monetize the domain temporarily to
see if it attracts much traffic and therefore has commercial value.
During this time, they *may* be willing to sell the domain back to
the original registrant. The price may depend on how much traffic
they saw in the interim. Once a value is determined, the domain may
be kept by the registrar (perhaps via a related company), or sold or
auctioned. Since the domain is never actually deleted at the
registry (it still maintains its original creation date), it never
gets a chance to enter the RGP.
As complicated as this may sound, it is the short version. There was
an excellent tutorial on these practices given at the Lisbon ICANN
meeting in March 2007. A transcript can be found at
http://www.icann.org/en/meetings/lisbon/transcript-tutorial-expiring-25mar07.htm.
The NARALO has agreed that this is a good project to take on, and
has requested that the ALAC pursue it. The issue was on the ALAC
meeting agenda of September 9, but unfortunately time ran out before
we got to it. However, since that meeting there have been a number
of conversations that indicate that this is an issue of importance
and that there is sufficient interest among At-Large that ALAC
should pursue it.
In summary, we are looking for a way to ensure that registrants have
a reasonably and fairly priced way to retain a domain name, even if
it had inadvertently expired in the recent past. We are essentially
looking at it from two main perspectives:
- Impact on registrants who lose control of their domain name,
potentially with significant financial or other impact; and
- Impact on users who can no longer access web sites and services
that they rely on.
If we an find sufficient interest in At-Large and the RALOs to
support this project, I would like to see the ALAC request an Issues
Report from ICANN staff, which is the first step in initiating a
Policy Development Process (PDP). Following the delivery of the
Issues report, the GNSO Council would need to vote to decide to
initiate a PDP. Informal conversations indicate there may be
reasonable support for this on Council; assuming ICANN staff decide
that this is an issues within the scope of the GNSO, initiation
requires only a >33% vote.
If we work quickly, I believe we can formally decide to proceed at
the ALAC's October 14th meeting, and issue the request for the
Issues Report in Cairo.
I solicit general statements of support from ALSs and RALOs, and a
few volunteers to help work on the request. Volunteers must either
be knowledgeable in the issues being discussed, or be willing to
learn very quickly.
Alan
PS For this who want to understand more of the history of the RGP,
you can refer to:
http://www.icann.org/en/registrars/redemption-proposal-14feb02.htm
http://www.icann.org/en/registrars/redemption-supplement-20feb02.htm
http://www.icann.org/en/meetings/accra/redemption-topic.htm
http://www.icann.org/en/minutes/prelim-report-14mar02.htm#RedemptionGracePeriod
<<<
Chronological Index
>>> <<<
Thread Index
>>>
|