Court reshapes domain registration in India, adding sweeping new obligations for registrars

Registrars and registries must comply with ruling to continue providing services in India.

Offering domain registration services to people and businesses in India is about to get more complicated.

The Delhi High Court, which is one level below India’s Supreme Court, issued a sweeping ruling (pdf) last week with implications for registrars and registries.

The ruling puts in place several requirements for registrars, and, in some cases, registries:

• Registrars and registries can’t turn on Whois privacy/proxy by default. Any registrant wishing to use privacy must opt in and pay a fee for doing so.
• Registrars must undertake Know Your Customer (KYC) for registration, similar to how NIXI, which manages .in domains, currently does. This means registrars providing services in India must review government-issued IDs or corporate documents. The court also urged the government to consider requiring registrars to either keep this information on file with NIXI or locally in India.
• Registrars and registries can lose their Safe Harbor protections as intermediaries under Indian law if they don’t take steps to prevent IP infringement. The court took issue with GoDaddy returning search results for searches such as “government of india” with suggestions for that string as a second level domain under multiple top level domains. A court could also issue an injunction requiring registrars not to display any matching domain suggestions for a particular term in search results. Additionally, India can add names to blocklists that should be unable to register.
• Registrars must appoint a Grievance Officer in India who can receive service.
• Registrars must provide data within 72 hours whenever “any entity or individual having legitimate interest, law enforcement agencies (LEAs) or the Courts, request for disclosure of data relating to any infringing or unlawful domain name.”

The court found that these changes are necessary because the domain name registration ecosystem has failed to prevent malevolent activity:

As is clear…Operators and DNRs (Domain Name Registrars) are woefully falling short of the implementing necessary safeguards to protect not only the rights of trademark owners, but also those of the common public. These entities, along with ICANN at the top, form part of the same pyramid wherein the entire domain name registration system is vested. However, despite the importance of the role played by them in the said system, the submissions made before this Court by all these entities, except NIXI, goes to show that none of these entities own up their responsibility for taking serious measures to prevent fraudulent activities involving trademarks, brand names, corporate house names etc., which have resulted in substantial losses to innocent public and to brand owners.