ICANN is today opening public comment periods on requests submitted by NeuStar, the .BIZ registry, and Afilias, the .INFO registry, to modify terms regarding the add grace period (AGP) in their respective registry agreements.

On 5 February 2008, NeuStar and Afilias submitted separate but similar requests through the Registry Services Evaluation Process to modify the AGP in their respective TLDs in order “to address the excessive delete problem” (i.e. domain tasting) in .BIZ and .INFO. Currently there are no limitations on the number of deletions that a registrar can process and receive a refund during the five-day AGP. The proposed service would limit the number of AGP deletions where a registrar could receive a full registration fee credit each month: either 50 per month or 10% of that registrar’s net new monthly domain name registrations, whichever is greater. A registrar would be permitted to delete as many names as it wished during the five-day AGP, receiving credit throughout the month. However, at the end of the .BIZ or .INFO normal monthly billing cycle the Registrar’s account would be debited for the full value of the domain name registrations that exceeded the month’s set threshold.

As provided for by existing consensus policy (http://www.icann.org/registries/rsep/rsep.html), ICANN has undertaken a preliminary determination to determine whether the proposed modifications might raise significant security or stability, or competition issues. ICANN’s determination is that the proposed modifications by NeuStar and Afilias do not raise such issues.

The next step in evaluation is that (because implementation of the proposals would require changes to the .BIZ and .INFO Registry Agreements) ICANN will post the proposed amendments, solicit public comment and refer the proposals to the ICANN Board for consideration.

A copy of the proposed NeuStar amendment is available here [PDF, 25K], and a copy of the proposed Afilias amendment is available here [PDF, 25K]. Both amendments provide for changes to Appendix 7, Section 3.1.1. Comments on the NeuStar amendment submitted to [email protected] will be considered until 23:59 UTC 28 March 2008 and may be viewed at http://forum.icann.org/lists/neustar-agp-proposal/. Comments on the Afilias amendment submitted to [email protected] will be considered until 23:59 UTC 28 March 2008 and may be viewed at http://forum.icann.org/lists/afilias-agp-proposal/. Please keep in mind that these are separate proposals with separate public comment forums.

All documentation regarding the NeuStar proposal is available at http://www.icann.org/registries/rsep/submitted_app.html#2008001, while documentation on the Afilias proposal is available at http://www.icann.org/registries/rsep/submitted_app.html#2008002.

ICANN’s next meeting will be held 22 – 27 June 2008 in Paris, France at Le Méridien Montparnasse. The meeting is free to attend, and open to any interested person. ICANN encourages broad participation in its bottom-up consensus-development processes. You can participate in these meetings in person, through the webcast or other remote participation opportunities, and/or by joining one of the various ICANN-related mailing lists.

Those who wish to attend are encouraged to start planning now and complete the online registration form. ICANN group rates are also now available at Le Méridien Montparnasse and reservations can be made through our website.

More information about additional supporting hotels, transportation and the meeting agenda will be posted as it becomes available. Please send any questions to [email protected].

• Pre-Register for the 2008 Paris Meeting
• Make reservations at Le Méridien Montparnasse

ICANN staff has produced a briefing note on the New Delhi meeting of 10-15 February 2008. This meeting was ICANN’s 31st meeting and was hosted by ICANN and the Indian Government and officially opened by Shri Jainder Singh, Secretary, Department of Information Technology, the Government of India.

The briefing note summarizes key developments at the New Delhi meeting and outlines next steps and sources of further information for each. The topics included are:

• New generic Top Level Domains (gTDs)
• Internationalized Domain Names
• GNSO Improvements
• Domain Tasting
• Accountability and Transparency
• The Joint Project Agreement (JPA) with the United States National Telecommunications and Information Administration
• IPv6
• Operations and Budget Planning
• Registrar Failure Workshop
• Translation Program

The briefing note is an informal summary. The authoritative records of official meetings will be available in their minutes.

Further information about the meeting, including presentations and transcripts is available at http://delhi.icann.org/ .

Information about the next meeting which will be from 22-27 June 2008 in Paris, France will be on the ICANN website soon at http://www.icann.org/meetings/.

ICANN is holding the second of two regional outreach meetings planned for FY07-08. The first meeting of these meetings was held in Taipei 19-21 October 2007.

This second regional meeting will be held in Dubai from 1 to 3 April 2008 in Dubai. The meeting is for policy makers, managers of country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) and Internet businesses in this region. The agenda for the meeting is designed to address three main themes: a broad introduction to the ICANN multi-stakeholder model; challenges and opportunities in the registry and registrar businesses; and an introduction and discussion of internationalized domain names. ICANN staff is coordinating with regional organizations (including APTLD) regarding participation.

This outreach activity is part of the ICANN Strategic Plan.

More information about the meeting in Dubai is available on our website at: http://public.icann.org/dubai08.