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Consultation on Registrar Accreditation Agreement Amendments
A summary and analysis of public comment on amending the RAA has been released. Also available here as a pdf.
The Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) is the contract that governs the relationship between ICANN and its accredited registrars. The current agreement has been in place since May 2001. The same contract is in place between ICANN and each of the approximately 900 accredited registrars (a directory of accredited registrars can be found at http://www.internic.net/regist.html ).
As the market has developed and the number of ICANN accredited registrars and domain name registrations have grown significantly, it has become clear that certain amendments should be made to this important agreement. The amendments are intended to provide clarity and certainty regarding the duties of registrars and the rights of registrants. This page has been created to describe the process, plans and actions for developing and implementing these amendments. Also included are links to relevant documents that have been developed and public comment fora that have been established.
In March, Dr. Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN called for a comprehensive review of the RAA and the Accreditation process. The results of that review included a workshop at ICANN’s meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico and to Board resolutions describing an approach for arriving at and implementing amendments. In accordance with that resolution, ICANN will solicit public input for possible changes to the RAA and the accreditation process. ICANN will also draft proposed amendments in accordance with that input, information received at workshops and public fora to date, and consultations with the gTLD Registrar Constituency. After discussions with the Registrar Constituency, a set of proposed amendments will be published for additional comment before they are submitted as advice to the Board for action.
Documents describing this work are found below and include: the existing RAA; Paul Twomey’s call for review of agreements and processes; the ICANN Board resolutions describing and supporting the process; and descriptions of proposed amendments discussed to date. The proposed amendments were discussed in the San Juan workshop and other venues.
A Public Forum to solicit suggestions for and comment on proposals is identified below.
After 30 days, input from the comment forum will be synthesized for discussion with the Registrar Constituency and others to develop a full set of proposed amendments to the RAA. The comment forum will be kept open after that for additional comment. Another forum will be opened when proposed amendments have been drafted and posted for discussion.
Below are documents describing possible amendments to the RAA. Alternatively, you can view them in plain text on a separate webpage. These documents were assembled first as a result of Paul Twomey's recommendations that were announced on 21 March 2007. These were discussed briefly with the gTLD Registrar Constituency at the Lisbon and San Juan ICANN meetings and publicly at the Workshop on Protection of Registrants in San Juan, Puerto Rico, 25 June 2007.
Each of the documents below describes the intent and purpose of the proposed amendment, as well as some of the issues concerning potential implementation of such an amendment. Comments on each of these can be made in the comment forum described below.
Workshop transcript: http://sanjuan2007.icann.org/files/sanjuan/SanJuan-ProtectionOfRegistrants-25June07.txt [TXT, 112K]
Protection of Registrants Workshop
25 June 2007, San Juan
Public Forum: Issues Arising out of Recent Experiences with RegisterFly
26 March 2007 Lisbon
This working group will look at the entire scope of the RAA (Registrar Accreditation Agreement), and recommend concrete steps to the larger At-Large community.
A mailing list, RAA-WG, can be subscribed to from http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/raa-wg_atlarge-lists.icann.org.The initial Public Comment period was open from 30 July 2007 through 10 September 2007 (while the forum remains open, the initial work is based on the input received during this period). It was established for the purposes of: soliciting input regarding potential amendments to the RAA; specific comment on the amendments subjects briefed above; soliciting input regarding potential changes to the registrar accreditation process. For this phase of the review, comments have been synthesized to inform and refine proposed amendments. This synthesis of comments can be found in plain text here or at the following link as a pdf file: http://www.icann.org/topics/raa/raa-public-comments-23oct07.pdf [PDF, 61K]
Another forum will be established to solicit comment on draft amendments constructed in accordance with the comment received here and elsewhere.
Send comments to: raa-consultation@icann.org
View comments at: http://forum.icann.org/lists/raa-consultation