[registrars] Paul Twomey's statement about complaint level directed at Accredited Registrars.

[Robert F. Connelly]

Dear Kurt:

I would appreciate it if you would provide Paul with a copy of my posting.

If I understood Paul during our teleconference correctly, he stated that 
the number of complaints requiring ICANN staff attention and intervention 
is independent of the size of the registrar.  As I previously wrote, I 
believe that ICANN should quantify this statement and provide data on the 
numbers and severity of the problems.

Let me bring to your attention a serious problem with Network Solutions 
which required the intervention of Louis Touton.  The complete details are 
found at the following URL:

	http://www.icann.org/correspondence/touton-letter-to-beckwith-03sep02.htm

The following is a truncated copy of the above correspondence, with 
comments from me in square brackets:

    Letter from Louis Touton to Bruce Beckwith Regarding Breach of VeriSign 
Registrar's Accreditation Agreement (Whois Data Accuracy)
3 September 2002

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3 September 2002

Via FedEx, Fax, and E-mail

Bruce Beckwith
Network Solutions, Inc. Registrar
505 Huntmar Park Drive
Herndon, VA 20170
Tel: 1-703-742-4817

Re: Notice of Breach of ICANN Registrar Accreditation Agreement

Dear Bruce:

This letter is a formal notice of seventeen instances of breaches of 
sections 3.3 and 3.7.8 of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) that 
Network Solutions, Inc. Registrar (VeriSign Registrar) signed in May 2001. 
Under section 5.3.4 of the RAA, VeriSign Registrar has fifteen working days 
to cure the breaches described in this letter. If the breaches are not 
cured in that period, then ICANN may give notice of termination of the RAA, 
after which VeriSign Registrar may initiate arbitration to determine the 
appropriateness of termination.

Under section 3.3 of the RAA, each ICANN-accredited registrar has agreed to 
provide free public Whois service giving information about the 
registrations it sponsors in the registry. Among other elements, the 
information must include:

<snip>

[I'll skip all but one of the 17.]

9. digeronimo.com: On 21 May 2002, we sent you a note concerning an invalid 
e-mail address in the Whois data for digeronimo.com: 
"no.valid.email at WORLDNIC.NET". Over three months have passed since that 
notification, yet VeriSign has not corrected the false data. Nor has 
VeriSign advised us what specific steps it has taken to investigate and 
correct the false data.

[This case involved registrations taken by ASCII KK, a reseller for 
WorldNIC, presumably a reseller for it's parent company, NSI.]

[But what Louis' letter does not say is that there were more than one such 
domain.  I am told that there were approximately 60,000 other ASCII 
registrations with the email address "no.valid.email at worldnic.net".]

[If that example of non-compliance did not "scale up" the demand upon ICANN 
staff, it was only because it was overlooked or ignored.]

[I for one do not believe that the number of discrepancies is *not* 
proportional to the number of registrations.  Further, that the number of 
discrepancies growing out of loose reseller relations are not 
*several_times_higher* times than the average for each registrar.]
<snip>

The balance of Louis' letter follows.

Cordially, BobC

As noted above, section 5.3.4 of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement 
agreed in May 2001 between VeriSign and ICANN provides that notice of 
termination of VeriSign Registrar's accreditation may be given if these 
breaches are not cured within fifteen working days.

The pattern of neglect demonstrated by the above circumstances is 
troubling. In its May 2001 accreditation agreement (as well as in that 
agreement's predecessor), VeriSign agreed to publish complete Whois data, 
to undertake reasonable efforts to investigate every notification of Whois 
data inaccuracy it receives from any person, and to correct any 
inaccuracies found. The above recitation demonstrates that VeriSign 
Registrar has repeatedly taken what appears to be a cavalier attitude 
toward the promises it made.

As outlined in ICANN's recent "Registrar Advisory Concerning Whois Data 
Accuracy" http://www.icann.org/announcements/advisory-10may02.htm, 
registrars have a vital role in maintaining the accuracy of Whois data. We 
believe that advisory gives valuable guidance to registrars how they can 
act responsibly toward the public as well as complying with their 
contractual obligations. VeriSign Registrar's conduct has fallen far short 
of both its responsibilities to the public and its agreements. We therefore 
provide this formal notice of breach of VeriSign Registrar's accreditation 
agreement with ICANN.

ICANN's goal in this matter is to promote accuracy of Whois data, which 
requires cooperative efforts by VeriSign Registrar in meeting its 
obligations. We hope that VeriSign Registrar will act promptly to cure the 
breaches outlined in this letter, and will become more responsive and 
cooperative in dealing with data inaccuracies as they are discovered. 
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.


Best regards,


Louis Touton
Vice-President and General Counsel
ICANN


cc: W.G. Champion Mitchell, Executive Vice President and General Manager, 
VeriSign Mass Markets Division (by e-mail)
Bobby Turnage, Esq., VeriSign, Inc. (by FedEx, fax, and e-mail)
Phil Sbarbaro, Esq., VeriSign, Inc. (by e-mail)
Stuart Lynn, President and CEO, ICANN (by e-mail)