[At-Large] [ALAC] Redemption Grace Period and associated rights

Thu Sep 25 00:14:02 EDT 2008

The UWI supports the principal objectives and broad outlines of this action.

Carlton 

-----Original Message-----
From: alac-bounces at atlarge-lists.icann.org
[mailto:alac-bounces at atlarge-lists.icann.org] On Behalf Of Alan Greenberg
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2008 12:37 AM
To: At-Large Worldwide; ALAC Working List
Subject: [ALAC] Redemption Grace Period and associated rights

Four weeks ago, Danny Younger raised the issue of the Redemption 
Grace Period (RGP) with the North American RALO. A copy of his e-mail 
can be found at 
https://st.icann.org/alac/index.cgi?redemption_grace_period_danny_younger.

In essence, about six years ago, the RGP was proposed and implemented 
to allow a registrant to recover a domain name after it had expired 
and been deleted by the registrar. The reason for the deletion could 
be that a registrant did not receive the required notices of expiry, 
or they were not sent, or they simply forgot. Under the RGP, when a 
registry (such as VeriSign for .com) receives a request to delete a 
name, it is put in a hold status for 30 days. During this period, the 
name does not resolve, and if nothing else had caught the 
registrant's eye before, this usually will. During this time, a 
registrant can recover the name for a fee. The fee is currently set 
$40 but can and generally is marked up by the registrar.

The RGP was implemented voluntarily as a Registry Service by all of 
the non-sponsored gTLDs.  A registrar is not required to offer the 
RGP however, so the existence of this registry service did not 
guarantee that a registrant who neglected to renew could effectively 
use the RGP. It was hoped that as Registrar contracts were 
renegotiated, the requirement to make the RGP available would be 
added, but this did not happen. A consensus policy could have been 
created which would force them to offer the service, but this also 
did not happen.

 From the point of registries, domains automatically renew, but the 
registrar can reverse this retroactively during the "auto-renew grace 
period" (ARGP - typically 45 days).

Since that time the situation has changed in that registrars have 
generally added conditions in their registrant agreements that give 
the registrar the right to transfer or sell or auction an expired 
domain to some other party (the so called "direct transfer" right). 
Often, during the AGRP, they may monetize the domain temporarily to 
see if it attracts much traffic and therefore has commercial value. 
During this time, they *may* be willing to sell the domain back to 
the original registrant. The price may depend on how much traffic 
they saw in the interim. Once a value is determined, the domain may 
be kept by the registrar (perhaps via a related company), or sold or 
auctioned. Since the domain is never actually deleted at the registry 
(it still maintains its original creation date), it never gets a 
chance to enter the RGP.

As complicated as this may sound, it is the short version. There was 
an excellent tutorial on these practices given at the Lisbon ICANN 
meeting in March 2007. A transcript can be found at 
http://www.icann.org/en/meetings/lisbon/transcript-tutorial-expiring-25mar07
.htm.

The NARALO has agreed that this is a good project to take on, and has 
requested that the ALAC pursue it. The issue was on the ALAC meeting 
agenda of September 9, but unfortunately time ran out before we got 
to it. However, since that meeting there have been a number of 
conversations that indicate that this is an issue of importance and 
that there is sufficient interest among At-Large that ALAC should pursue it.

In summary, we are looking for a way to ensure that registrants have 
a reasonably and fairly priced way to retain a domain name, even if 
it had inadvertently expired in the recent past. We are essentially 
looking at it from two main perspectives:

- Impact on registrants who lose control of their domain name, 
potentially with significant financial or other impact; and
- Impact on users who can no longer access web sites and services 
that they rely on.

If we an find sufficient interest in At-Large and the RALOs to 
support this project, I would like to see the ALAC request an Issues 
Report from ICANN staff, which is the first step in initiating a 
Policy Development Process (PDP). Following the delivery of the 
Issues report, the GNSO Council would need to vote to decide to 
initiate a PDP. Informal conversations indicate there may be 
reasonable support for this on Council; assuming ICANN staff decide 
that this is an issues within the scope of the GNSO, initiation 
requires only a >33% vote.

If we work quickly, I believe we can formally decide to proceed at 
the ALAC's October 14th meeting, and issue the request for the Issues 
Report in Cairo.

I solicit general statements of support from ALSs and RALOs, and a 
few volunteers to help work on the request. Volunteers must either be 
knowledgeable in the issues being discussed, or be willing to learn 
very quickly.

Alan

PS For this who want to understand more of the history of the RGP, 
you can refer to:
http://www.icann.org/en/registrars/redemption-proposal-14feb02.htm
http://www.icann.org/en/registrars/redemption-supplement-20feb02.htm
http://www.icann.org/en/meetings/accra/redemption-topic.htm
http://www.icann.org/en/minutes/prelim-report-14mar02.htm#RedemptionGracePer
iod

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