[registrars] Febuary Meeting Take #2?

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

Hello All:

Hopefully everyone is enjoying their holidays, I just wanted to update
everyone on some recent events. First, as Rick informed everyone the
February meeting in South Florida has been cancelled. The Executive
Committee has not yet had the opportunity to discuss the specific problems
that Rick ran into in scheduling this meeting, but I would like to thank him
for the efforts he undertook. As the principal coordinator of the last
meetings (Dulles and Amsterdam) I can tell you that it is a thankless job.

As many of you know various registrars have had a working dialog with
various law enforcement agencies over the past couple of years. In fact the
first non-ICANN sponsored meeting I coordinated was in Reston three years
ago with the FBI and DOJ to address domain name hijacking that popped up
with the advent of the Shared Registry System. A number of registrars also
participated in a FTC meeting a couple of months ago to discuss Whois
accuracy and access. During this meeting and in my subsequent discussions
with the FTC I have been stressing the need to involve the global registrar
community in tackling various problems. In what I view as a positive step in
the right direction, the FTC has announced a two day work shop on combating
cross boarder fraud. This workshop is tentatively scheduled for February
19th and 20th in DC. I have been informed that the FTC is attempting to
include global participants from both the private and public sector. One
session during the two day work shop will involve domain name registration
authorities (registrars and registries).

It is my opinion that the three biggest problems confronting domain name
registration authorities are domain name portability, Whois issues, and
credit card fraud. Over the past year I have been rather vocal on all of
these issues, some more so than others. Therefore, what I would like to
propose during the next Registrar Executive Call scheduled for Jan 6th is
that the registrar constituency met in DC on Friday February 21st after the
two day FTC work shop. This will allow us to disseminate the various topics
discussed during the previous two days as well as prepare a road map for
implementation of ICANN 2.0 and getting an update from the Whois and
Transfer Task Force Implementation committees.

Although I would have enjoyed the meeting in South Florida, as I would not
have had to hop on a plane. I believe holding a registrar meeting in
conjunction with this fraud work shop will prove very valuable to all
participants. I have spoken with several registrars over the past couple of
days that have thought this would be an excellent idea, please provide me
and the rest of the Executive Committee with any feedback so that we can
make a decision during our January 6th call.

Best regards,

Mike