[council] Registrar Constituency Statement on .net Contract [Fwd: Written copy of the statement]

[Ross Rader]

Bhavin has provided me with a copy of his presentation to the Council at 
the Public Forum this afternoon.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Written copy of the statement
Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 15:41:00 +0200
From: Bhavin Turakhia <bhavin.t at directi.com>
To: 'Ross Rader' <ross at tucows.com>


There was extreme displeasure expressed by all registrars with regards to
changes in the .net contract without following due process. The Registrars
have drafted a statement to the icann board - which has been unanimously
agreed upon by ALL the registrars that attended the Registrars Constituency
meeting

"Registrars trusted the ICANN Board and ICANN staff to act on behalf of the
ICANN community in negotiating a new contract with Verisign for .net.

Registrars consider there to be a breach of trust by the ICANN Board and the
ICANN staff in approving a contract with Verisign regarding .net that
contains significant changes from the draft .net agreement posted on the
ICANN website, without ANY public consultation. We consider this not only a
breach of trust but a breach of the transparency provision (Article III -
specifically Section 6) of the ICANN bylaws that states that ICANN shall
operate in an open and transparent manner and consistent with procedures
designed to ensure fairness, specifically that ICANN would have a public
comment period incase of changes that significantly effect 3rd parties
and/or involve any imposition or changes to pricing.

This is not the first time this has happened. When the new transfers policy
was implemented, Verisign negotiated a change in the registry-registrar
agreement with the ICANN staff, which was approved by the ICANN Board, to
accommodate the transfers policy that contained changes beyond purely for
the purposes of the transfers policy without any public consultation with
any party including parties that were significantly impacted by that change.
ICANN staff gave an undertaking to registrars that this would not happen
again. It is the registrars view that this verbal undertaking was also
breached.

The changes to the .net agreement that specifically concern registrars are:

- the maximum price ($4.25 including the ICANN registry fee) put forward by
Verisign in the .net application only applies for the first 18 months of the
new agreement. After that Verisign is free is set any price. Registrars want
the maximum price fixed for the duration of the entire agreement.

- Verisign is excluded from new consensus policies that relate to the
introduction of new registry services other than what is in the new .net
agreement. Registrars want Verisign to continue to be subject to consensus
policies in this area.

- ICANN may not change the above terms in a renewal of the agreement.
Registrars want ICANN to have the ability to negotiate a lower maximum price
at the time of contract renewal.

We therefore wish for
* a reconsideration of the .net contract as per the process that should have
been followed
* assurances that due process will be followed in similar circusmtances in
the future
* specific assurances that there is no way something similar would occur in
the dotCom contract

Registrars present at luxembourg who have all agreed to this statement
======================================================================
ascio
anytimesites
ausregistry
tucows
enom
bulkregister
core
deusthce
directi
domainbank
domainsonly
apag
godaddy
wildwest
bluerazor
iholdings
melbourne it
name intelligence
name.com
namebay
network solutions
namesecure
srsplus
register.com
solis
domainclip
tuonome
dotster
markmonitor
gmo
nominalia
stargate
schlund