[council] Advisory: Add Grace Period Limits Policy ICANN announces implementation plan for new consensus policy

[Glen de Saint Géry <Glen@xxxxxxxxx>]

[To: council[at]gnso.icann.org; liaison6c[at]gnso.icann.org]
[To: ga[at]gnso.icann.org; announce[at]gnso.icann.org]
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http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-17dec08-en.htm

Advisory: Add Grace Period Limits Policy

ICANN announces implementation plan for new consensus policy

17 December 2008

ICANN is today announcing the implementation plan for the new Add Grace Period 
(AGP) Limits Policy adopted by the ICANN Board on 26 June 2008. A grace period 
is a specified number of calendar days following a gTLD registry operation in 
which the operation may be reversed and a credit may be issued to a Registrar. 
AGP is typically the five-day period following the initial registration of a 
domain name. Currently, when a domain name is registered through a registrar, 
that registrar may delete the domain name at any time during the first five 
calendar days of the registration (the AGP) and receive a full credit for the 
registration fee from the registry operator. AGP appears as a contractual term 
in some, but not all gTLD registry agreements.

Posted here is the AGP Limits Policy and the implementation plan. The plan 
specifies that gTLD Operators (hereinafter referred to as "Operators") must 
inform each of their accredited Registrars of the new Policy within the next 21 
days and subsequently implement the Policy as soon as possible thereafter but 
no later than 31 March 2009.

The new AGP Limits Policy is based on a detailed recommendation made by the 
GNSO Council to the Board earlier this year and provides that Operators who 
offer an AGP to their customers will now be prohibited from making refunds to 
registrars for AGP deletes that exceed the threshold limits set by the Policy. 
The limits defined by the Policy are (i) 10% of that registrar's net new 
registrations (calculated as the total number of net adds of one-year through 
ten-year registrations as defined in the monthly reporting requirement of 
Operator Agreements) in that month, or (ii) fifty (50) domain names, whichever 
is greater, unless an exemption is requested by a Registrar and subsequently 
granted by an Operator. While Operators will initially have significant 
flexibility on how to treat such requests, ICANN Staff will monitor the process 
closely and modifications will be recommended if any additional patterns of 
abusive behavior are detected.

The implementation plan is the result of extensive public deliberations which 
were part of the GNSO Policy Development Process (PDP) on domain tasting, 
outreach to Operators and ICANN-accredited Registrars, and public comment on a 
draft implementation plan.

The plan includes significant changes to the reporting obligations of 
Operators. Operators will now be required to submit as part of their monthly 
reporting requirement information for each Registrar including, but not limited 
to, the number of exemption requests, number of exemptions granted, numbers of 
names affected by granted exemption requests and number of AGP deletes if this 
information is not currently defined in the Operator's monthly reporting 
requirement. Additionally, the monitoring requirements in the plan require 
ICANN to publish status reports on the implementation effort which will include 
a review of all exemption requests and their disposition, names of registrars 
that have recurring requests for exemptions and the reasons for these 
exemptions as well as other information defined in the plan.

The recent announcement to the ICANN Community on 13 November 2008 reported 
that AGP deletes decreased by 84% from June to July 2008 as a result of the 
related AGP budget provision adopted by the Board for fiscal year 2009. The 
budget provision has the same thresholds as the AGP Limits Policy. The AGP 
Limits Policy will carry a much higher financial penalty (i.e., the domain name 
registration fee paid by Registrars to Operators) than the budget provision 
(i.e., the current registrar-level transaction fee of US$0.20) for excessive 
AGP deletes. It is expected that following implementation of the Policy, AGP 
deletes will continue to decline until few or none are subject to excess delete 
fees.

Glen de Saint Géry
GNSO Secretariat
gnso.secretariat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://gnso.icann.org