[registrars] Important Update

["Michael D. Palage" <michael@palage.com>]

Hello All:

I hope that everyone's holidays are going well. I would just like to bring
the following important items to the attention of everyone.

First regarding the elections. There were a number of inquiries regarding
the voting results. First the results provided by the Votebot are
authoritative, my Excel sheet was not. The Excel sheet was generated by
manually reviewing a 144 page document of integrated emails received by the
votebot. Upon cross referencing the Votebot summary results and the Excel
summary results obtained from the 144 page email document the following
discrepancies were found.

The Votebot did not record the following ballots:

AOL's ballot was not recorded because it was sent to Jim Bramson, but
submitted by Lauren Fisher. AOL voted for Stubbs, Rader, and Tonkin.

FranceTelecom's ballot was not recorded for unknown technical reasons that
were reported during the voting process but which were unable to be
identified. France Telecom voted for Rader and Tonkin.

The Votebot only recorded one vote attributed to NSI, although Bruce
Beckwith submitted three ballots according to the raw log files. I will have
to obtain the Transaction ID from Bruce to see if he submitted three
separate ballots or the same ballot three times. Based upon the review of
the Votebot logs there appears to be three separate transaction ID's which
seems to suggest that the Votebot was not designed for the same person
exercising three votes for three separate entities. Bruce cast all three
votes for Stubbs, Tonkin and Grabensee.

In my Excel Spreedsheet I forgot to include the vote of Steven Yi for
SRSPlus (dotTV) who voted for Rader and Tonkin.

Therefore, under either analysis of the ballot results, the three Names
Council representatives winners are Stubbs, Tonkin and Grabensee. At this
time I would like to congratulate the Constituency's new Name Council
representatives. If anyone would like to challenge these results I can make
available to them the 144 page raw ballot results for their personal review.

Second, United States registrars should be receiving correspondence from the
United State House Judicial Committee regarding false Whois information, see
http://www.lextext.com/HouseIPwhoisletter.html. As those registrars that
were in attendance in Marina del Rey may recall, there was a 15 minutes
afternoon session devoted to this topic when a representative from the MPAA
spoke. Based upon the growing priority of this topic coupled with the
Enforcement Mechanisms proposed by NeuStar in the .US proposal, see Section
B.3-19, I believe that it is important that the registrar constituency make
this issue a priority. The Executive Committee will be releasing a proposed
agenda topic for 2002 so that we will be able to measure our progress
throughout the year.  I will be including this item on this proposed agenda.

In the letter sent by the House Judiciary, they ask for responses to their
inquiries by February 1, 2002. Listed below are the relevant section in your
ICANN accreditation agreement that may be relevant in your response. I will
try to gather the corresponding sections in the other Registry-Registrar
agreements.

Current ICANN policy on the question is set forth in subsections 3.7.7.2 and
3.7.8 of the RAA <http://www.icann.org/registrars/ra-agreement-17may01.htm>:

3.7.7.2 A Registered Name Holder's willful provision of inaccurate or
unreliable information, its willful failure promptly to update information
provided to Registrar, or its failure to respond for over fifteen calendar
days to inquiries by registrar concerning the accuracy of contact details
associated with the Registered Name Holder's registration shall constitute a
material breach of the Registered Name Holder-registrar contract and be a
basis for cancellation of the Registered Name registration.

3.7.8 Registrar shall abide by any specifications or policies established
according to Section 4 requiring reasonable and commercially practicable (a)
verification, at the time of registration, of contact information associated
with a Registered Name sponsored by Registrar or (b) periodic
re-verification of such information. Registrar shall, upon notification by
any person of an inaccuracy in the contact information associated with a
Registered Name sponsored by Registrar, take reasonable steps to investigate
that claimed inaccuracy. In the event Registrar learns of inaccurate contact
information associated with a Registered Name it sponsors, it shall take
reasonable steps to correct that inaccuracy.

I hope that everyone continues to enjoy their holiday time with family and
friends. Rest up, 2002 is going to be a very interesting year :-)

Best regards,

Michael D. Palage