• In Focus
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During the ICANN meeting in Cairo, the ALAC voted to request an Issues Report on the subject of registrants being able to recover domain names after their formal expiration date. The ALAC request was submitted to the GNSO Council on 20 November 2008. ICANN Staff prepared the Issues Report on post-expiration domain name recovery and submitted it to the GNSO Council on 5 December 2008. In the Issues Report, ICANN staff recommended the GNSO Council to initiate a PDP to review and consider changes to the Expired Domain Deletion Policy or develop a new consensus policy addressing:

• Whether adequate opportunity exists for registrants to redeem their expired domain names
• Whether expiration-related provisions in typical registration agreements are clear and conspicuous enough
• Whether adequate notice exists to alert registrants of upcoming expirations
• Whether additional measures need to be implemented to indicate that once a domain name enters the Auto-Renew Grace Period, it has expired (e.g. hold status, a notice on the site with a link to information on how to renew, or other options to be determined)
• Whether, and if so, how best to enable the transfer of a domain name in RGP.

ICANN Staff provided the GNSO Council with clarifications on a number of questions raised in relation to the Issues Report. The GNSO Council reviewed these clarifications during its meeting on 29 January and agreed to create a Post-Expiration Domain Name Recovery drafting team to eventually propose recommendations for the initiation of a policy development process and create a charter for the working group.