The Registrar Accreditation Agreement (section 4.2) indicates that new and revised specifications and policies may be established on the topic of ?prohibitions on warehousing of or speculation in domain names by registries or registrars?; I ask that the Names Council initiate a Policy Development Process on this topic in view of recent events first noted in the ICANN Advisory ?Registrar Expired Name Market Developments? posted 21 September 2004.
At issue: If registrants fail to renew their domain names at the conclusion of an expiration grace period, certain registrars are planning to auction the rights to these domain names, instead of allowing them to ?drop back into the pool? of names available for re-registration on a first-come, first-served basis, as is currently the process.
Discussion on this issue has already begun in the At-Large Forum and on the Registrars Discussion List wherein it has already been noted by the Registrars Constituency Chair that ?registrars are modifying their contracts to take over the ownership of the name after expiry; the registrant has changed, and the registrar is themselves the new registrant.?
I see an effort designed to thwart the implementation of the Expired Domain Deletion Policy which is scheduled to commence
Thank you for considering this matter.
Best regards,
Danny Younger
dannyyounger(at)yahoo.com