Another deadline missed in registrar contract talks

ICANN and domain name registrars will fail to agree on a new Registrar Accreditation Agreement by the end of the year, ICANN has admitted.

In a statement Friday, ICANN said that it will likely miss its end-of-year target for completing the RAA talks:

While the registrars and ICANN explored potential dates for negotiation in December 2012, both sides have agreed that between holidays, difficult travel schedules and the ICANN Prioritization Draw for New gTLDs, a December meeting is not feasible. Therefore, negotiations will resume in January 2013, and the anticipated date for publication of a draft RAA for community comment will be announced in January as well.

The sticking point appears to still be the recommendations for strengthening registrars’ Whois accuracy commitments, as requested by law enforcement agencies and governments.

At the Toronto meeting in October, progress appeared to have been made on all 12 of the LEA recommendations, but the nitty-gritty of the Whois verification asks had yet to be ironed out.

Potentially confusing matters, ICANN has launched a parallel root-and-branch Whois policy reform initiative, a community process which may come to starkly different conclusions to the RAA talks.

Before the LEA issues are settled, ICANN doesn’t want to start dealing with requests for RAA changes from the registrars themselves, which include items such as dumping their “burdensome” port 43 Whois obligations for gTLD registries that have thick Whois databases.

ICANN said Friday:

Both ICANN and the registrars have additional proposed changes which have not yet been negotiated. As previously discussed, it has been ICANN’s position that the negotiations on key topics within the law enforcement recommendations need to come to resolution prior to concluding negotiations on these additional areas.

Registrars agreed under duress to start renegotiating the RAA following a public berating from the Governmental Advisory Committee at the ICANN Dakar meeting October 2011.

At the time, the law enforcement demands had already been in play for two years with no substantial progress. Following Dakar, ICANN and the registrars said they planned to have a new RAA ready by March 2012.

Judging by the latest update, it seems quite likely that the new RAA will be a full year late.

ICANN has targeted the Beijing meeting in April next year for approval of the RAA. It’s one of the 12 targets Chehade set himself following Toronto.

Given that the draft agreement will need a 42-day public comment period first, talks are going to have to conclude before the end of February if there’s any hope of hitting that deadline.

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Tagged: ICANN, law enforcement, privacy, raa, registrar accreditation agreement, whois