[council] Note to counsel on DT motion

[Tim Ruiz]

Avri, just some minor typos. Seems like some policy work goes on that
long sometimes, but 1800 years is pushing it :) In line below with
additions in brackets, deletions in brackets with DELETE:

Tim 

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [council] Note to counsel on DT motion
From: Avri Doria <avri at psg.com>
Date: Mon, March 10, 2008 10:05 am
To: Council GNSO <council at gnso.icann.org>


hi,

Outside of salutations and politeness at the end, this is a draft of 
the note to ICANN Legal counsel regarding aspects of Domain Tasting. 
I have tried to capture the questions I know about. If anyone has 
another question, or recommends edits to what is written, please let 
the me/the list know. I plan to send this out after 24 hours - i.e. 
shortly after 1500 UTC 11 March.

thanks

a.

------

On 6 March 20[0]8, the GSNO council drafted a motion
http://gnso.icann.org/issues/domain-tasting/dnt-motion-6mar08.shtml 
to curb domain tasting. It would prohibit any gTLD operator that has 
implemented an add grace period from offering a refund for any domain 
name deleted during the AGP that exceeds 10% of its net new 
registrations in that month, or fifty domain names, whichever is 
greater. An exemption may be sought for a particular month, upon the 
documented showing of extraordinary circumstances, as detailed in the 
motion. The GSNO council has sent this motion out for public comment 
until 28 March at which point public comments and any updates to 
constituency statements will be considered as part of the GSNO council 
process for resolving the Domain Tasting PDP that is currently open 
and in the deliberations stage.

As part of the GNSO council's discussions on 6 March, we also decided 
to ask for Legal Counsel to review the motion and to let us know 
whether it is in scope for the GNSO Council. While the PDP itself had 
been deemed within scope by Legal Counsel, there were questions as to 
whether the motion itself remained in scope.

Additionally, the following specific issues were raised:

a. The .com agreement states that Consensus Policies may not 
"prescribe or limit the price of Registry Services" (see Section 3.1(b) 
(v)(A)
http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/verisign/registry-agmt-com-01mar06.htm)

. Would a policy dictating how much VeriSign could refund registrars 
during the AGP be considered a prescription or limitation on the price 
of Registry Services? The question extends to whether this policy 
would, therefore, [be] unenforceable.

b. If the answer to the preceding question is affirmative, would a 
policy eliminating the Add Grace Period be considered a prescription 
or limitation on the price of Registry Services?

As we intend to resume work on this at the beginning of April, I would 
appreciate[DELETE:, if it is at all possible,] having your response by
that time.