[ga] Official gTLD Statement re: WLS (Revised)

["Neuman, Jeff" <Jeff.Neuman@neustar.us>]

All,
Here is the revised gTLD Statement which has been approved by the
Constituency regarding the TF report.  I know it is a little bit past the
deadline, but since it is our formal position, I thought you may want to see
it.  The parts that are different from the last statement are italicized.
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Dear Transfer Task Force/Names Council,

The gTLD Constituency, which represents both the sponsored and unsponsored
gTLD registries, has had the opportunity to review the DNSO Transfer Task
Force's Report on the Wait List Service ("Report") presented to the Board at
the ICANN meeting in Bucharest. As we have consistently stated within the
Transfer Task Force, the gTLD constituency has several serious concerns with
the report and the process behind producing that Report, which prevent us
from giving it our support.

More specifically, the constituency unanimously believes that the Report
delves into matters that are beyond the scope of any policy task force and
certainly are not appropriate for the policy consensus process. These
matters include, but are not limited to: (1) whether a Registry Service can 
be introduced by a Registry Operator; and (2) the price of a Registry
Service. We believe that such issues are related to the business of the
individual registry and are more appropriate for the market place to
regulate rather than the policy making body of ICANN.

Although for the reasons above the gTLD Constituency will vote to reject the
NC report, it would like to reiterate the following points:

1) The gTLD Constituency supports the notion that the ICANN board move with
all haste to implement and
actively enforce the proposed Redemptions Grace Period. In addition, ICANN
should move forward with conducting a thorough review of current practices
on the deletion of domain names in order to work with the gTLD Registries
and gTLD Registrars to establish a Code of Conduct or Best Practices
document. This process should be completely independent of its decision on
whether or not to allow the WLS to move forward. 

2) The gTLD Constituency believes that the Interim Redemptions Grace Period
proposed by VeriSign only for names subject to the WLS is satisfactory to
allow the WLS to go forward, so long as the core elements (including the
time periods and ability to restore deleted domain names subject to the WLS)
of the Redemptions Grace Period are implemented by VeriSign concurrently
with the WLS.

3) The TF Report indicates that there were three areas of comments received
by the Community. We believe there were actually four such areas of comments
and the fourth is that comments were received questioning the jurisdiction
of the Task Force in being able to provide recommendations to the Names
Council and ultimately to the ICANN on pricing of a Registry Service. As has
been stated above, we believe that the price of any Registry Service does
not amount to a "policy" that is subject to review by the Domain Name
Supporting Organization.

In light of the comments above, and the representations already made by
VeriSign, we strongly believe that VeriSign's proposed amendment to Appendix
G be approved by ICANN and that they be allowed to introduce the Wait List
Service.

*We want to note for the record that because of VeriSign's inherent interest
in this issue, VeriSign did not participate in the gTLD Constituency's
discussion of this particular issue.

Thank you for this opportunity to present our comments and we would be happy
to answer any questions that you may have.

Jeffrey J. Neuman, Esq.
Chair, gTLD Registry Constituency

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