[registrars] FW: Registrar Concerns Regarding ICM proposed contract

["Nevett, Jonathon" <jnevett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The following is a message from Stuart Lawley from ICM Registry about
the centralized whois provision in the proposed .xxx agreement.  I
understand that the other sTLDs with the same provision are .mobi and
.asia.  Thanks.  Jon

 

________________________________

From: Stuart Lawley [mailto:sjlawley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 7:00 PM
To: Nevett, Jonathon; 'Jay Westerdal'; Tim Ruiz
Cc: Burr, Becky
Subject: RE: Registrar Concerns Regarding ICM proposed contract

 

Dear Jon, Tim, etc.

 

We have looked into the provision in Appendix S, Part 6 (Public Whois
Specification) of the draft ICM Registry Agreement, which contains the
following statement:

 

Registrars will be required to participate in the operation of a
cross-registry WHOIS database, which will provide searching capabilities
and access to all information concerning domain name registrations
regardless of which TLD the domain name is registered in or which
registrar processed the domain name application.

 

This provision appears in at least one other new sTLD registry
agreement, and seems to have been boilerplate provided by our back-end
provider.  As far as we have been able to determine, the cross-registry
WHOIS database was related to two ICANN projects - one that would
require registries to use a single common IANA ID for registrars, to
provide uniformity in search; and second the desire to leverage new
protocols such as IRIS that allow for cross-registry interaction.  We
believe that this provision was specifically aimed at the IRIS protocol
(which is an IETF standards-track protocol now - see RFC 3981 and RFC
3982), which does allow for cross-registry data sharing.
http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/crisp-charter.html
<http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/crisp-charter.html>  provides core
information regarding CRISP and the IRIS protocol.

 

ICM Registry is proposed as a thick registry, however, and absent any
ICANN mandate we have no need or desire for a cross-registry WHOIS
database.  We would be happy to include a provision to that effect in
our agreement with registrars, or to provide any other appropriate
assurances to the registrar community in this regard.  

 

In light of the endless delays ICANN has imposed on ICM in this process,
and the fact that this same language appears in other sTLD agreements, I
respectfully request that the registrar constituency not seek further
delay but accept my personal commitment to resolve this appropriately
once the contract is approved.

 

I would appreciate it if one of you would post this to the official
registrar list.

 

 

 

Regards

 

 

 

Stuart Lawley

ICM Registry LLC