ICANN speaks out for registrar reform

ICANN's register accreditation process is about to be reformed through the termination of RegisterFly.com. Due to its failure of operation, 75,000 domain name losses were filed in federal court in January and early February of this year and ICANN decided to close it. Therefore, thousands of its registrants have to transfer their domain names to a different ICANN-accredited registrar by March 31, 2007. Continued doubt about its ability to coordinate hundreds of registrars might have a solution through the coming Lisbon meeting between March 26 and March 30, 2007.

ICANN speaks out for registrar reform
Dr Twomey drops the dime
By Burke Hansen
Published Thursday 22nd March 2007

... ICANN has now called for an overhaul of the entire registration and accreditation process, and given the first look at what the future of the relationship between ICANN, the registrars, and domain holders might look like.

"What has happened to registrants with RegisterFly.com has made it clear there must be comprehensive review of the registrar accreditation process and the content of the RAA (Registrar Accreditation Agreement), Dr Twomey emphasized. "This is going to be a key debate at our Lisbon meeting scheduled for 26 March to 30 March 2007. There must be clear decisions made on changes. As a community we cannot put this off."

Tough talk from an organization generally considered toothless.

Dr Twomey's strongly worded statement continued: "ICANN introduced competition to the domain name market in 1998. Back then there was one registrar. There are now over 865. That's a good thing because it has made domain names cheaper and offered more choice. But the RAA was designed and signed when the domain name market was much smaller. The market now supports about 70 million generic TLD names and is growing. Registrants suffer most from weaknesses in the RAA and I want to make sure that ICANN's accreditation process and our agreement gives us the ability to respond more strongly and flexibly in the future."

The announcement listed a plethora of problems with the current system, in which ICANN has little authority over a corrupt or derelict registrar other than to yank the accreditation.

Proposals for what ICANN's role in organizing the structure of the internet should be, or if ICANN is the right group to do it at all, are legion, and could fill an entire conference on their own. Still, the list of options on the table for discussion shows that ICANN is tired of screwing around with Registerfly, and wants to institutionalize changes along the lines advocated by El Reg in the last few weeks.

The most important issue - some kind of escrow system to hold data in trust in the event that there is a dispute about who the owner is - has apparently already been accepted as necessary by ICANN, and even bolder proposals, involving possibly even a new entity to address these disputes directly, are also on this impressive list of potential reforms...

From The Register
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/22/icann_registerfly_reform_registrar/