[ga] ICANN Board can intervene to stop domain tasting for 1 year

[George Kirikos <gkirikos@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi folks (especially lurking ICANN Board members),

According to the Registrar Accreditation Agreement, section 4.3.4:

http://www.icann.org/registrars/ra-agreement-17may01.htm

"4.3.4 A specification or policy established by the ICANN Board of
Directors on a temporary basis, without a prior recommendation by the
council of an ICANN Supporting Organization, shall also be considered
to be a Consensus Policy if adopted by the ICANN Board of Directors by
a vote of at least two-thirds of its members, so long as the Board
reasonably determines that immediate temporary establishment of a
specification or policy on the subject is necessary to maintain the
operational stability of Registrar Services, Registry Services, the
DNS, or the Internet, and that the proposed specification or policy is
as narrowly tailored as feasible to achieve those objectives."

I believe with NSI's recent actions, one can argue that ICANN needs to
step in to maintain the operational stability of Registrar Services. If
NSI is permitted to continue their behaviour, other registrars will be
compelled to do the same, monkey-see, monkey do. That would be
instability, a disruptive change of registrar services from the status
quo.

To define it as narrowly as possible, one can simply make the
policy/specification be that the ICANN fee is non-refundable even
during the add-grace period. One can specify it is established for a
period of 90 days, and renew it for up to a year. One needs a
two-thirds majority of Board members to establish a temporary consensus
policy in this manner. By the end of the year, the GNSO council would
probably have a consensus policy via the PDP in the right direction, to
support the temporary policy enacted by the Board.

The time for inaction is over. As Vint might say, "Make it so."

Sincerely,

George Kirikos
http://www.kirikos.com/