Business Constituency may propose new regulations for .net.
The comment period for the proposed renewal of the .net registry agreement ends on May 10, yet no one has commented to date. But there will be comments by time the comment period closes, and one could be a bombshell: a proposal to apply the untested Uniform Rapid Suspension scheme to .net.
Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) is a trademark rights protection mechanism that is likely to apply to new top level domain names whenever they finally come out. It lets trademark holders file a quick UDRP at a fraction of the cost. As of now any domains that are won through URS are merely suspended, not handed to the complainant. But that may well change.
My initial fear was that URS would come out on new TLDs and then be applied to .net and .com down the road. But it’s possible URS will be applied to .net at the same time as new TLDs if certain people get their way!
A draft public comment from the business constituency wants certain aspects of new TLD registry agreements to be included in VeriSign’s .net renewal, including URS. You can see the discussion and draft public comment here.
You know how this works. If a comment like this is submitted at the end of the comment period it will be hard to respond. So I urge you to comment on the proposed .net registry agreement. Make it clear that, for the most part, .net should continue to be run the way it is today without any of the new rules being invented for new TLDs.
You can comment by sending an email to net-agreement-renewal@icann.org. View current comments here.
George Kirikos says
It appears that I’m the only one to have commented so far. I found another big loophole in the draft agreement, which is point #6. In particular, VeriSign would be allowed to *exclude* certain registrars from promos, with the current language. e.g. a promo that excluded all registrars from Toronto, Canada from participating would be perfectly legal under the language in 7.1.b).
That’s what happens when you have amateurs drafting contracts.
theo says
That is indeed a big loophole George thanks for pointing that one out.
The whole thing looks rather rushed and it’s like there has not been enough thinking of future implications.
And yeah you are the only one who made a comment one helluva comment though! I thought of making a comment but after reading yours i thought my input wouldbe err less valuable 😉
George Kirikos says
If you don’t want to submit a long comment, you can always write in and endorse someone else’s comments! 🙂 Only 1 day left to submit comments, unless they extend the comment period.
Andrew Allemann says
The latest I’m seeing is that the BC may drop the issue from its comments thanks to Phil Corwin from Internet Commerce Association bringing it up.
http://forum.icann.org/lists/bc-gnso/msg01989.html
Jim Davies says
Good work (again) Phil!