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Registrar Accreditation Policy and Process Must be Reviewed
21 March 2007
President and CEO of ICANN, Dr Paul Twomey today called for major review of ICANN’s Registrar Accreditation Agreements (RAA) and the Accreditation process.
“What has happened to registrants with RegisterFly.com has made it clear there must be comprehensive review of the registrar accreditation process and the content of the RAA” he said. “This is going to be a key debate at our Lisbon meeting scheduled for 26 - 30 March 2007. There must be clear decisions made on changes. As a community we cannot put this off.”
“ICANN introduced competition to the domain name market in 1998. Back then there was one registrar. There are now over 865. That’s a good thing because it has made domain names cheaper and offered more choice. But the RAA was designed and signed when the domain name market was much smaller. The market now supports about 70 million generic TLD names and is growing.” Dr Twomey said.
“Registrants suffer most from weaknesses in the RAA and I want to make sure that ICANN’s accreditation process and our agreement gives us the ability to respond more strongly and flexibly in the future” he said.
“What is presently happening with RegisterFly makes it clear that there are also some problems with proxy registrations. Specifically, proxy registrations are available as a choice, but people who have them have great difficulties getting access to their data and having their domain name transferred where a registrar is uncooperative or has other problems with transfer. ICANN has had difficulty accessing this data too,” Dr Twomey said.
“We need to expedite data escrow. There has been a long and detailed discussion and much interaction between ICANN staff and registrars on this issue. But we need to reach a conclusion. Recent events and the Lisbon meeting present that opportunity. There are resource implications and useage rules that need to be discussed among the ICANN community. I look forward to the continuing efforts and collaboration of registrars with ICANN in that regard ” he said.
“Registrants clearly want ICANN to have more capacity to access data on their behalf if there are significant problems with their registrar. There is a need for better enforcement mechanisms and an ability for ICANN to intervene more quickly if a registrar fails or is engaged in damaging business practice” he added.
“There’s also no way that registrants can measure the performance of registrars in any independent comparative way. That should be encouraged” Dr Twomey said.
“The vast majority of ICANN’s accredited registrars offer high levels of service and integrity. But as we have seen, there is the risk that poorly performing registrars can hurt registrants very significantly. If the domain name industry wants to remain community self –regulating as it has been until now we need to put in place further sensible and practical measures to protect registrants” he noted.
Dr Twomey said he would like to see the following issues included in any discussion:
“All ICANN stakeholders need to be involved in this debate. But in particular I would like to see registrars and registrants actively engaged in the discussion,” Dr Twomey said. “It is in their interests to make sure that poor practice is driven from the process and that the protection of registrants is increased.”
Media Contacts:
Jason Keenan
Media Adviser
ICANN ( USA)
Ph: +1 310 818 9072
E: jason.keenan@icann.org
International: Andrew Robertson
Edelman ( London)
Ph: +44 7921 588 770
E: andrew.robertson@edelman.com