VERISIGN CONTRACT REVISIONS POSTED

The letter points to a redlined Technical Corrections to Proposed .com Registry Agreement.

The revised Information on Proposed VeriSign Agreement Revisions notes, "Many participants in these discussions have noted the need for additional information concerning the provisions and the effect of the present agreements and the agreements as they are proposed to be revised... Although we have sought to respond on an individual basis to these questions as time permits, it has become clear that the community discussion would benefit from a more formal, authoritative source for this information. We have therefore prepared this page to bring together in one place the key information regarding the present and proposed agreements. In addition to providing links to source materials, we will post on this page responses to frequently asked questions as we prepare them. A few of the FAQs appear below; we expect to complete others and post them on this page in the next few days."

That would, one gathers, be after the decision is finalized tomorrow, April 2nd by the ICANN Board as schedule.

A March 29 letter from VeriSign's Roger Cochetti to Vint Cerf is also posted, defending VeriSign against the slew of allegations raised in recent months.

Among those allegations and dear to registrars' and domain owners' hearts, is the issue of VeriSign not releasing expired domain names.

"The NSI Registrar is not offering "expired" domain names for "resale" through GreatDomains at a premium. No "expired" domain names have been listed on the NSI Registrar's listing website, GreatDomains.com. The NSI Registrar has never auctioned any domain name registration whose contractual period has ended. Indeed, in 2000 the NSI Registrar deleted approximately 3,400,000 unpaid initial and renewal domain name registrations," Cochetti writes.

Contradicting at least, the spirit of this claim, ICANN reserves the right to make "consensus policies" regarding name non-renewal, as specified under "General Obligations of Registry Operator":

C. To the extent that Consensus Policies are adopted in conformance with Section 4 of this Agreement, the measures permissible under Section 3(A)(ii)(b) above shall include, without limitation:

(iii) reservation of Registered Names that may not be registered initially or that may not be renewed due to reasons reasonably related to (a) avoidance of confusion among or misleading of users, (b) intellectual property, or (c) the technical management of the DNS or the Internet (e.g., "example.com" and single-letter/digit names);

In addition, "The permissible scope of "Consensus Policies" has been revised to embrace activities concerning "Registered Names" at the second or a lower level, rather than being limited to second-level domains, as in the existing agreement. Whois requirements for lower-level registrations. The Whois requirement has been extended to cover all domain name and nameserver registrations at any level within .com. It is currently limited to second-level domain-name registrations."

To date the only Censensus Policy that ICANN has struck is the Intellectual Property Constituency's UDRP.

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