[council] Transfer issues
As Ken Stubbs will soon be making a presentation to the Council on "Reported problems in TLD transfers and in lapsed renewals", I wish to bring to your attention another related issue that I have not yet seen addressed by the registrar constituency -- In the event of a charge back by a credit card company, certain registrars may take the position that the registration shall then be transferred to the registrar (as the entity that has paid the registration fee for that registration to the registry), and that they thereby reserve all rights regarding such domain names including, without limitation, the right to make the domain names available to other parties for purchase. Instead of the domain being released to the registry for return to the pool of available names, the domain (in this set of circumstances) becomes the exclusive property of a single registrar that may then place the name up for auction in the secondary market. This raises a question with respect to article 3.7.9. of the current Registrar Accreditation Agreement: "Registrar shall abide by any ICANN adopted specifications or policies prohibiting or restricting warehousing of or speculation in domain names by registrars." Have such policies been defined? If not, perhaps we ought to address this issue as well. The problem stems from the registry contract language: "(a) Registrar agrees to pay VGRS the non-refundable amounts of US $6 for each annual increment of an initial domain name registration and US$6 for each annual increment of a domain name re-registration (collectively, the "Registration Fees") registered by Registrar through the System." If the fee was "refundable" under certain circumstances (such as a fraudent charge reported within the first 45 days), then all such domains could be returned without difficulty to the available pool. At issue is who should bear the financial burden, the registry or the registrar? Most all companies find themselves contending with the problem of "uncollected receivables". For most, this is a matter that falls into the category of standard business risk. In this particular case, registrars may be seeking to minimize their risk through actions which deprive consumers of the opportunity to register a given domain name in a competitive market environment (as only a single price will be available via the auction house). We should not be supporting anti-competitive practices. The General Assembly will welcome the opportunity to participate in a working group to discuss these and other such issues. |