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ICANN to fine tune registrar relations

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At the 29th International Public Meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), held this week in San Juan, Puerto Rico, discussion ranged around the body’s regulatory approach to the 900 registrars it works with. The genesis of the topic lies in the controversy and misery that issued from managerial and systemic failings at the firm, RegisterFly, earlier this year. With key managers engaged in lawsuits over misuse of funds and unfair dismissal, the registrar’s entire roster was left out in the cold as the legal sideshow swamped its technical competence.

Speaking at the meeting, ICANN president and CEO, Dr Paul Twomey, said: ‘In March I said that there must be comprehensive review of our Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) and the Accreditation process. The results of that review are driving this workshop. We are going to keep this discussion going, get input from the wider community, and then we will make the changes needed to protect registrants and domain names.’

Twomey added: ‘When ICANN introduced competition to the domain name market in 1998, there was one registrar. Today there are more than 890 – so it’s obvious that a lot has changed since the first Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) was introduced in a much smaller and radically different marketplace. We also learned valuable lessons from the RegisterFly situation and ICANN is turning those lessons into plans and policies to protect registrants and their domain names.’

Two major changes are currently under consideration. One is a sliding scale of enforcement that will broaden the range of penalties registrars can expect to suffer for incompetence. At present, stripping accreditation is the only weapon up ICANN’s sleeve in such cases, but is not merited every time. The second change is for ICANN to enforce closer regulatory relationships between registrars and resellers, in order to tighten complaints procedures.