[registrars] UPDATE

["Michael D. Palage" <mpalage@infonetworks.com>]

For those that were unable to attend the Cairo meeting last week or
participate in the teleconference, I would like to state that I believe that
it was a productive meeting. To recap.

The constituency was very active in the area of Working Group B (Famous
Trademark Protection). Without adequately addressing the IP community's
concern new top-level domain will be delayed. However, in a very productive
WG-B meeting and subsequent discussions between registrars and IP people in
private. Much progress was made. It appears that a buy-in from the IPC with
regard to the "sunrise" provision is possible. The only difference appears
to be on the creation of a famous marks list. In our original proposal we
called for all registered trademarks being eligible for the sunrise period.
However, the IP people thought this would be a nightmare with hundreds of
millions of marks registered world wide. Most of the registrars in
attendance shared this viewpoint and were willing to discuss the creation of
a list. We as a group must now agree on whether this is in our best
interest. Please note we have made it VERY clear that such a list could only
be used in connection with a sunrise period and NOT in connection with any
filtering system.  The next step is to agree upon what price the famous
trademark owners will be charged during this sunrise period. They are
concerned about being charged a premium. The IPC will be getting back to us
within the next couple of weeks to agree on a potential compromise. I will
keep you informed. I personally believe that this issue will be put to bed
in Japan

With regard to new top-level domains. Although things are much less than
crystal clear, there is progress being made.

Within the Registrars Constituency the major issues focused on the need for
the Constituency to get properly funded and organized. To date, only the
following registrars have paid the min. constituency fees ($250) for the NC
expenses: PSI-Japan, NameSecure, DomainBank, InfoAvenue, Register.com,
InfoNetworks and AllWest. If there is anyone that paid by electronic wire
transfer and did not notify me please do so.

In Cairo there was much discussion about the need to increase the
constituency fee to allow us to organize and have regular telephone
conferences in between ICANN regional meetings. Bruce Beckwith from NSI is
looking into estimated teleconference charges so we can better estimate a
budget. Clive Flory from Melbourne IT has expressed an interest in heading
up a financial task force to put an exact figure on the constituency fee and
help me in collecting the money.

The next major discussion point was failure for some operational ICANN
accredited registrars to comply with the requirements of the contract. Louie
Tuton discussed that ICANN was interviewing a compliance liaison to review
registrar activity.  However, there was serious discussion within those in
attendance about the need to create a best practice  document and/or a Code
of Conduct. Louie indicated that it would be possible for this document to
be adopted by the broad and imposed on ALL ICANN accredited registrars even
those NOT participating within the constituency.

Another major concern was the warehousing of domain names by ICANN
accredited registrars.

Bob Connelly from PSI-Japan and Greg Schuckman from Register.com have
indicated their willingness to increase registrar participation in the
process. Recently I have received some new applications. Thank you guys.

There remains a lot to be done but I just wanted to drop everyone a line and
let them know what has been going on.

Mike