[ga] Two open questions to Tim Cole

["Richard Henderson" <richardhenderson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tim,

You wrote to EnCirca expressing ICANN's "concern" that EnCirca seemed to you to have been violating the spirit of having a restricted Top-Level Domain like .Pro.

You also quoted, from the Registry Agreement Appendix L, part of the regulatory reason you might be concerned.

Your concerns are shared by others who believe that ICANN's processes should be upheld and enforced.

You have requested from EnCirca the following data, prior to 11th April or in that week:

1. The submission date and time, and the content, of all registration data (including updates) submitted in electronic form to the .PRO registry operator; 2. Copies of all written communications constituting registration applications, confirmations, modifications, or terminations and related correspondence with .PRO registrants, including registration contracts; and 3. Records of the accounts of all .PRO registrants, including dates and amounts of all payments and refunds.

Question A: Can I ask you, Tim, whether included in this data you will expect to receive the actual evidence of government agencies or professional organizations to confirm the professional credentials of EnCirca's registrants, and the measures of verification taken by EnCirca to ensure that the credentials are authoritative (in relation to the rules set down by ICANN) and not merely the self-verification of registrants making claims for themselves?

Question B: And also, Tim, will you be asking RegistryPro to confirm that they were in possession of digital certification for each registrant themselves, as they were supposed to be before they activated any domain?

Can I ask, for example, that you confirm the actual documentation from a recognised authority that confirms the professional credentials of Victoria Proffer, who registered http://www.voice.pro on March 18th (4 days after your correspondence to EnCirca) and who 3 days later was selling the same domain on Ebay for $50,000?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5762112580&ssPageName=ADME:B:LC:US

What actual documentation from a recognised and acceptable authority can EnCirca present you with, apart from a registrant's self-assertion and self-verification? If such Agreement-required documentation can not be produced, in line with the restrictions imposed on the Registry, then the Agreement implies that the registrations should be cancelled after 60 days.

Because the integrity of .Pro as a restricted Registry hinges on the detailed verification of registrants as legitimate users of this "restricted" TLD, I suggest to you that it is pivotal that you do not accept registrar-defined methods of certification that fail to "lock out" ineligible registrants, and insist on the stringency of methods required by ICANN, in relationship sto the kind of entities that have sufficient authority to confirm credentials with rigour and scrutiny.

It is ICANN's role to define and impose this policy, not the role of a registrar to re-define the policy in such a way that the TLD is 'opened' and ceases to be what it was originally intended to be. Therefore I urge you to inspect any claims of credentials for true process and scrutiny, to see whether they were sufficient (if they even exist beyond self-assertions) to keep out the domain speculators who seem to have flooded into this registrar-defined new version of .Pro.

I repeat, it is surely ICANN and not a specific registrar who should define policy.

Thank you for your open response to these questions, Tim.

regards,

Richard Henderson