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Web chiefs’ consultation takes off

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The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has launched its long-touted plan to draw ideas for the future of domain name registration from the marketplace itself. Earlier this year, ICANN decided that the growing number of domains and registrars had created demand for a new registration system – one that places a greater emphasis on procedure.

To that end, ICANN has committed itself to taking onboard suggestions from those who work in the industry. Some discussion points already generated at previous conferences suggest that ICANN’s processes could be improved by:

Incorporating rules to govern the terms under which a registrar can be sold and still retain its ICANN accreditation
Including further contract enforcement measures with more options than just terminating accreditation
Addressing ownership issues when one or more of a ‘family’ of registrars fails to comply with ICANN
Making registrars responsible for policing their relationships with resellers
Requiring skills training and testing for all ICANN-accredited registrars

ICANN CEO and president, Dr Paul Twomey, said: ‘I called for the review of RAA and the accreditation back in March, and I’m pleased to be moving into the active consultation phase.’ He also referred to the inflexible nature of ICANN’s present operations, and the recent failure of domains firm, RegisterFly: ‘The need for this review is clear. The current RAA is more than six years old. We’ve seen the number of accredited registrars grow to more than 900. And we’ve seen the incredible difficulties that can be unleashed with the collapse of a Registrar.

‘These consultations will make sure we have input from the wider community, and help us make the changes needed to protect registrants.’

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