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EFF becomes second to appeal new .org contract

Kevin Murphy, August 7, 2019, 12:57:52 (UTC), Domain Registries

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has appealed ICANN’s decision to add stronger trademark protection rules to .org.
The civil liberties organization has filed a Request for Reconsideration with ICANN, saying that the new .org contract should not oblige Public Interest Registry to implement the Uniform Rapid Suspension policy.
URS is a swifter, cheaper version of the anti-cybersquatting UDRP policy. It can lead to clear-cut cases of trademark-infringing domains being relatively quickly suspended, but not transferred.
But the EFF is worried that it could be abused to curtail free speech.
It said URS is “particularly dangerous for the many .org registrants who are engaged in an array of noncommercial work, including criticism of governments and corporations”.
URS was created via ICANN’s bottom-up, community-led policy-making process to apply to new gTLDs applied for in 2012, not legacy gTLDs such as .org, EFF argues,
Adding more rights protection to a legacy gTLD “should be initiated, if at all, through the multistakeholder policy development process, not in bilateral negotiations between a registry operator and ICANN staff”, the RfR states.
The EFF is also concerned that the new contract allows PIR to unilaterally create its own additional rights protection mechanisms.
I don’t think this is a new power, however. Remember when PIR proposed a “Copyright UDRP” a couple of years ago, evidently as a way to turf out The Pirate Bay? That plan was swiftly killed off after protests from, among others, the EFF.
The EFF’s reconsideration request (pdf) does not address the issue of price increase caps, which were removed in the new contract.
That more-controversial provision is already the subject of an RfR, filed by NameCheap last month.
Both RfRs will be dealt with by ICANN’s Board Accountability Mechanisms Committee before being passed to the full board.


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