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Draft Summary of Public Comments on Proposed .BIZ, .INFO and .ORG, gTLD Registry Agreements

11 September 2006

The ICANN Board considered a draft summary of Public Comments on Proposed .Biz, .Info and .Org agreements at its meeting held September 7, 2006.

The draft summary is at http://www.icann.org/announcements/comments-summary-07sep06.htm.

The Board is interested in public comments on the draft summary. Comments may be provided at http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-2-28jul06.htm.

2689 responses were received. A significant number of these were cross posted or copied over the three separate comment forums that were provided. There were 1014 unique senders. Many responses were made via a form letter. Some individual respondents sent in multiple responses. One individual sent in 32 responses.

Key elements of the public commentary were:

  • Concern that the lifting of provisions imposing price caps on registry operators will lead to differential pricing relating to single names or renewals;
  • A belief that there are inadequate protections around the use of traffic data by registries;
  • Concerns that renewal provisions are too lenient;
  • Process concerns - that the public commentary period provided by ICANN was too short, that ICANN had not provided sufficient information in support of some of the proposed provisions and that ICANN should wait for PDP 06 policy recommendations to be made before new agreements are made with registries.

The proposed draft agreements were first posted for public information and then comment in July 2006.

Staff reported during the Board meeting that negotiations with the registries are already underway regarding clarification of the issues surrounding differential pricing.