Protection of Registrants Workshop Wednesday, 13 February 2008 New Delhi, India >>TIM COLE: We're just finishing up some technical issues. Did everyone that's in here get a number when you came in? Please be sure you have a number. All right. Thank you. We'll be starting shortly. Hello. Welcome. My name is Tim Cole, and I'm the chief registrar liaison at ICANN. And we've got an interesting workshop today, and I hope you don't get too comfortable where you're sitting because pretty soon we're going to ask you to move a little bit. But today's workshop is called "Protection of Registrants When a Registrar Ceases Business Operations," and we thought we would try something a little different with this workshop, and we want to get your input and your participation today, so we're going to walk through some information about what ICANN deals with when registrars go out of business, and then we're going to ask for your ideas about what other things we might consider and what we should be doing. For those of you that are watching on Webcast or participating in the chatroom, if you're watching on Webcast please be sure to log in to the chatroom because we will be including the people in the chatroom in our discussions, so we'd encourage you to do that. I'm joined today by my colleague, Mike Zupke, who is a registrar liaison manager at ICANN, and he's going to run this exercise for the most part, plus we have several very able subject matter experts that we've recruited to help out with our small group discussions that are from the registrar and registry community. So with that, I do hope that you'll participate. Keep your number handy. We're going to be asking you to use that in a few minutes. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Mike and there is your mic. >>MIKE ZUPKE: All right. Surprisingly, the mute button is how you turn on the microphone. Who knew. [Laughter] >>MIKE ZUPKE: So, you know, I appreciate, you know, that Tim has given you some background in this and I hope that there's no fear here in being a participator in the process. I suspect that in the ICANN world, that's not going to be the case, but I really do encourage you to use this as an opportunity to provide us with some feedback. As you may know, in the ICANN world we put a lot of thought into how we get comments from people, but generally this requires people to provide documentation in writing or to respond to items on our Web site, and so this is a way that we hope to get input from users in a little different and a little bit more of an interactive format. So we welcome you to participate in this, and I hope that this is a valuable experience for you. We hope to gain value in this from your input. So I'd like to just give you a little bit of overview of what's going to happen today. Here's the agenda. We're going to talk about registrar -- the termination process a little bit, and how we got to this point in the -- or why this presentation is happening today. And then we've got some scenarios that we're going to work through with you, our members of the audience who are really more participators than audience members, I think, this time. But we've got three scenarios that are pretty real-life, and we, as ICANN staff, want input from you in how you expect us to deal with these situations, and we're planning to produce some documentation in the near term on this, and so this is -- it really is an important part of the process for us. So I'd like to tell you a little bit about why we're doing this. So as you're -- I'm sure -- all aware, we've got this system of accredited registrars who interact either directly with consumers or through resellers, to register gTLD domain names, and there are situations where an accredited registrar will have its accreditation agreement terminated for either -- any number of reasons, but primarily, I think, there are two classes of terminations that people are familiar with. We have a scenario of a voluntary termination by a registrar. This is a case where a registrar decides either they don't wish to be in business or they've worked out alternate arrangements that they are going to facilitate the business in another manner. It could be a case where a registrar determines that it's no longer cost-effective or profitable to be in the business. There could be any number of reasons. It could be a matter of a consolidation of registrations between registrars that have merged that one registrar is more technically moved out of business. But that's the first class of terminations would be the voluntary category. That's what we're going to look at primarily today. There are a lot of parallels between that and the next class, which are involuntary terminations, and for the most part an involuntary termination involves the breach of a registrar's accreditation agreement and the procedures that follow after that, such as the cure period, which is allowed by the accreditation agreement. During this 15-day working period, a registrar who has received a breach notice from ICANN can correct or cure the breach in order to come back in good standing. If the registrar doesn't do this, there is a termination period after ICANN notifies the registrar that it intends to terminate the agreement. So while, you know, this could be a very likely scenario and we've actually seen it in the recent past where a registrar went through the breach and termination process, as I mentioned what we'd like to do is focus on a little bit simpler set of facts today, and we'll talk about the voluntary termination scenario. Finally, while this is probably, you know, the course of an involuntary termination, there's also the scenario where a registrar may just close up shop and disappear. It's what we call "going dark," and it's probably the most challenging situation for both ICANN and registrants because a lot of what needs to happen in the transition process relies on cooperation from the -- what's -- the terminated registrar or the registrar who has disappeared. So that's a little bit of background about how a registrar is in existence and may end its existence, at least as a legal ICANN accredited entity. In terms of what happens after a registrar is -- has a termination agreement terminated, there are -- there are a series of steps, but the two, I think, that are most worth focusing on are the process of disabling the registrar's access to the registry and, depending on the circumstances, this could happen in a number of different ways but the predominant -- the key factor or the key action that happens is that the registry will disable the registrar's ability to register new names. In other words, they can't take on new business although they can still continue to serve their existing customers. In some circumstances, that's not -- that's not possible or it's not a viable solution. There are -- there is potential, for example, if there were a rogue registrar who were terminated and might want to do harm to its former customers and while that seems to be a pretty unlikely scenario, there would be a case maybe where a registry would totally disable a registrar's access to the registries. Then finally -- and this is really why we're here today -- there's the process of moving the -- the registrations from the terminated registrar also can be called a "losing registrar" to a "gaining registrar" and the gaining registrar would have to be an ICANN accredited entity who could take on those registrations on behalf of the -- or from the losing registrar, so that these customers continue to be served who have registrations. So that's a pretty, I think, simplistic explanation of the process and I hope that that background is helpful as we go forward with this. Let me advance here. So what we'd like to do is before we break into the smaller groups, we'd like to just sort of talk through some of the -- the issues that we face as staff in trying to deal with scenarios which seem, you know, potentially very simple. For example, the case where a registrar voluntarily terminates its accreditation agreement and finds a successor registrar. This is -- you know, this is a matter that ICANN has to look into and approve. Under the terms of the inter-registrar transfer policy, a bulk transfer can happen from a terminated registrar to another registrar, but it must be that ICANN determines that this is in the community interest. So one of the challenges that we face as staff is determining whether a transfer is in the community interest. So what I'd like to do is just kind of open this up a little bit and Tim is going to walk around and get some community interaction here. This is what this is supposed to be about. The first question that we face is determining: What is community interest? And so the transfer policy says that the -- that the bulk transfer may be approved by ICANN, provided it determines it's in the community interest, so I guess, you know, the first and the most logical question is: What does that mean? >>TIM COLE: What factors should we consider? Let's get some volunteers. I bet Wendy has a good idea. >>WENDY SELTZER: Well, being a lawyer, I would look at the contract that the registrants have signed, to see whether they have anything to say about what happens to their data and their registration. >>TIM COLE: Other thoughts of characteristics that we should consider -- that ICANN should consider in determining whether or not a receiving registrar should be qualified to receive the bulk transfer that they would be in the community interest? >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS: Hi. This is Eric Brunner-Williams speaking as an individual. I'll generalize from Wendy Seltzer's comment, from the private contract with the individual and the registrar, to the public law that pertains to the data that the registrar has collected and the gaining registrar should be within the same jurisdiction, within the same legal regime for the -- with regards to the protection of personal data. >>TIM COLE: Okay. Other thoughts, other ideas? >>MIKE ZUPKE: One of the things that I haven't mentioned is that the transfer policy requires for the gaining registrar to be accredited and operational in all the TLDs that the terminated registrar was, and so, you know, while this isn't exactly a factor of whether it's in the community interest, this is another measure that we look at to determine whether the transfer is, indeed, a good thing, and obviously a possible thing in that case. >>TIM COLE: Okay. Chuck. Chuck Gomes. >>CHUCK GOMES: Thanks, Tim. Registrars have different registration agreements, and if there were significant difference in those, you'd certainly want to make sure how they would propose to handle that, whether the registrants are going to have to change to the new agreement, whether they will support the old agreement, et cetera. >>TIM COLE: Thank you. Well, those are some good ideas. You want to go to the next question, unless somebody else has another -- >>MIKE ZUPKE: All right. So, you know, I agree. I think these are really good thoughts and I think that a lot of thought does need to be put into the registrant's perspective. Obviously, one of the things that we look to is making sure that a registrar has a communications plan, that they plan to inform the registrants of the bulk transfer so that there are not unexpected surprises for registrants learning that they are suddenly doing business with a different registrar. >>TIM COLE: I should mention we have somebody capturing all of these ideas, not just the transcript of this session but Karen Lentz is over here, and will be capturing all of the feedback that we get, so that we can be sure to take this back with us and keep it in our thoughts. >>MIKE ZUPKE: So, you know, our second question is based on -- you know, I think a little bit more development of what is the community interest. And I think that, you know, if we're -- if we're in a little bit smaller groups and really putting our heads together, I think that we could probably come up with, you know, a definition. And maybe every person in this room might have a different definition of what the community interest is, but we're interested in, you know, getting to learn what sorts of things would you potentially see as a registrant or as a registry or as a registrar or as a member of the community at large that would, you know, cause you to think differently about whether a bulk transfer should be approved. And, you know, as an example, we talk about whether the -- the terminated registrar had compliance issues at the time that they were terminated, or whether the gaining registrar did, or whether the terminated registrar may have even owed ICANN money at the time of the termination and whether that should be a factor in the determination of approving the bulk transfer. So are there -- you know, are there other thoughts about the things that should be considered in that? Oh, here. Krista. >>KRISTA PAPAC: Still community, interest? Are you still talking about community interest? I just -- from my perspective, there's different kinds of registrars out there. You have corporate services registrars, you have retail registrars, you have registrars that are registrars but they're more into owning their own domain name portfolios and so I would think that people that are -- that have -- you know, if I was a registrant, I would want to go to somebody that has a similar business model to the one that I had already selected. I don't know how ICANN actually regulates that, but, you know, that, I would think, ha, has -- you know, or would know that but I would think that would have a significant impact on who you get transferred to. >>MIKE ZUPKE: Thank you. I'll just observe that ICANN doesn't regulate, but... [Laughter] >>KRISTA PAPAC: [Speaker is off microphone] >>MIKE ZUPKE: Yeah. I know. >>KRISTA PAPAC: Sorry. >>MIKE ZUPKE: Any other thoughts? >>TIM COLE: Oh, I can't keep Wendy down. >>WENDY SELTZER: Well, as registrant of a few domain names, and liaison from the At-Large Advisory Committee, I don't speak for them, but come in with a sense of registrant interests, and so looking for ensuring that the transferee registrar offers the same services, the same sorts of protections of law and jurisdiction as earlier mentioned, as well as a place where the registrant can find similar services like privacy protections, similar length that the registration would be guaranteed for the period of time for which the registrant had actually paid money for it would be useful considerations. >>MIKE ZUPKE: Thank you. Other thoughts? >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS: Eric again. Wendy and I are taking turns. The focus of your question has been about what the registrant expects of the former incumbent registrar and of the gaining registrar, but our role is ICANN came into existence to create competition within a monopoly marketplace, and for accidents of history, the area where monopoly was ended and competition was created was the front end of the registry/registrar system. Competition amongst registrars. An interest that we have, which is independent of the interests of the registrants, is to ensure that competition is increased, not decreased, through any allocation of registrants from one registrar to another, for whatever reason, including registrar failure. So as a general principle, we have to be careful that we're not falling into the trap of failing upstream. That is, failing towards a larger registrar and decreasing competition for reasons that appear to benefit the registrants in the present. That is, the number of services that the gaining registrar has being a superset of the services of the failing registrar. Thank you. >>MIKE ZUPKE: So -- I appreciate that's a good comment, and it's a good reminder that there are really a pretty wide field of considerations beyond necessarily just the registrant's expectation. So I'm going to just go pretty quickly, I think, through this last consideration and then I'm eager to get you into small groups because I can tell that there are a lot of people who are dying to participate but just feeling a little bit shy about getting the microphone. So finally, you know, one of the things that we're interested in looking at is potential negative consequences or even positive consequences of a bulk transfer, and it's something that if there are thoughts about that, I'd be happy to hear it, but I think that probably that's something that, you know, would be an easier question to answer if you had a little bit more specific facts in front of you. So unless there are people who are eager to address that particular answer -- yeah. >>SHAHRAM SOBOUTIPOUR: Okay. I'm Shahram. There are some registrations in the corporation of in registrars with some registrants. I myself have some problems with this. I'm from a country that -- I'm from Iran. There are -- some of the registrants are doing sanctions against Iranian people, so it might be important that if the losing registrar has some registrants from like my country, it must be important that we note this, that the gaining registrar doesn't have a problem with the registrants. >>MIKE ZUPKE: I think that's a very important thought, especially as we think about the geography of where registrars are, and as the marketplace evolves, it is becoming a more and more diverse geographical distribution of registrars. All right. So shall we move ahead. >>TIM COLE: Okay. So this was our trial run on scenario 1. Now we're going to ask you to do the same thing in a smaller group setting. So I'm going to ask our group leaders, and -- to stand up and I'm going to ask each of the leaders -- I'm going to ask 1 and 3 to go to this corner over here [indicating], and everyone that came in with a 1 or a 3, follow them over there. And then 2 and 4 will stay in this corner, and if you have a 2 or a 4 on your paper, please come down over here. And then we have 5 and 6? I've got 5 and 6 will go towards the middle and the back here, and we'll have everyone that's a 5, 6, or 7 go back there. Okay? So again, hold up your numbers, people. So 2 and 4 over in this corner [indicating]. Somebody must have gotten a 2 or a 4. Okay. >>WENDY SELTZER: Just unplugging. >>MIKE ZUPKE: Would the 2 and 4 group, if you'd like to maybe move a little closer to the chairs, so you don't have to move twice. >>TIM COLE: We decided with the size of the group that we had that we would combine, so we're going to make three groups. All right. Mike, you want to give them their directions? >>MIKE ZUPKE: All right. So we've walked through a scenario already, and in this case we worked to try and establish what criteria should be used to determine when a bulk transfer request is in the community's interest. So we're moving forward from this proposition, and I think that we -- we haven't -- intentionally we haven't given you very much description about what the terminated registrar looks like and what the gaining registrar might have looked like that was proposed. And so we want you to think about what your answers to this next question might be like, depending on those sorts of variables, so I don't -- we don't want to prompt you too much. We'd like you to encourage to think in every possible direction. So in this second scenario, we ask you to assume that the terminated registrar made a proposal, a bulk transfer recipient proposal, and that either ICANN found it unacceptable or the recipient of the bulk transfer declined to accept the transfer. So in this situation, which is actually a pretty complicated situation and something that we genuinely do want community feedback in dealing with, we ask you to tell us how should we be allocating the registrations to another registrar. So in doing this, we've got some questions that are posted and I'll read them, but the group captains have got some -- they've got this printed out, so, you know, feel free to start discussing if you can see it already. But the question that we're asking to think about is how the name should be allocated. Come up with a system, a method, or some strategy that should be used to allocate these names to another registrar or if there's some other way that's currently within -- within our means, what would you propose that ICANN do? To the extent that you come up with things that maybe aren't within our means -- for example, if you've got an idea for a new policy that should be created -- I'd encourage you to make note of those things, but what we're -- you know, what we're really interested in today is getting some feedback in what we can do today to handle these situations which we expect are, you know, very potential and very realistic. The second question, as you're thinking about the proposed solution to this problem, how would you defend it in terms of ICANN's obligation to transparency and fairness? You know, in particular, how will we ensure that the other registrars who may have wanted to have the names allocated to them will find this to be a fair solution. Make sure that you find -- the registrants will find this to be a fair solution and make sure that it's a solution that can be done in a way that is reasonably transparent, so that, you know, there aren't questions about, you know, the sorts of things that obviously we want to avoid. And then we've got -- >>TIM COLE: I think we'll just let them walk through the questions. Each of the group leaders can go through the questions because otherwise they'll have to try to remember them all. >>MIKE ZUPKE: Okay. That's a good point. >>TIM COLE: But we'll let you talk as a group for about 15 minutes, and come back and report to the group as a whole, all right? Okay. Thank you. >>MIKE ZUPKE: For the purpose of this scenario, assume that ICANN has access to the data, the registration data. (Group discussion). So you've got about four or five more minutes to try to wrap up your discussion on these questions before we bring them back to the larger group. Thank you. (Group discussion.) >>MIKE ZUPKE: Okay, I have heard a lot of good conversation and discussion around the room, and I hate to cut it short but we are kind of limited in the amount of time we have. And I've heard that some groups would like another 30 minutes, and I think that when we talk about these things I think that staff feels the same way. You need more time and more time to do this right. So I am going to start over here and I'm going to ask -- What was this group 2-4? Group 2-4, if you would please report to us what your solutions, your findings, your conclusions were. >>MASON COLE: Okay. So we only got through three of the questions, but we did the best we could. There were a few things that came up in terms of how names could be allocated. There's a possibility that you could create a separate entity registrar and have the names temporarily allocated to them and then give -- was that your idea, Rob? [ Laughter ] But you could, then, have names temporarily allocated there and let registrants select the names out and assign them to their preferred registrar. A curse then put on that is that they looked at that in the RegisterFly situation and that became a bit unwieldy. But since we were brainstorming, we thought it might be worthy of consideration. One common theme on our input is that registrants should have as much latitude for decision-making in the process as possible. To the extent that the registrants themselves can be given as many options for making decisions about the disposition of their name as possible, then that should be accommodated. Other options on how names could be allocated would be an auction situation where an auction would be held for -- to determine who the gaining registrar would be. An RFP situation could be facilitated. And then when we moved into some of the other questions, like describing how ICANN's transparency and fairness mandates would be fulfilled, we agreed that as much proactivity as possible on the part of the registrars involved as well as ICANN would be preferred; that, in fact, to minimize confusion in the process, an aggressive and proactive PR and communications plan could be put into place so that people who were affected by the situation wouldn't be confused or -- confusion would be minimized, and they wouldn't be concerned that maybe all -- that the e-mail that they were getting about the situation was an attempt at somehow stealing the name out from under them. So if ICANN in its capacity to speak as an authority could say "Yes, this is a process that we've approved and this is the gaining registrar and you can rely on what's going to happen to your name after that and here are your options for how to handle the name afterward," then that would help minimize confusion. And that is as far as we got, Tim. >>TIM COLE: That's still very good. Mike, do we -- which group do we have going next? >>MIKE ZUPKE: We can -- I was going to bring the group in the front in next, but I thought if there were any questions from the other groups, this is a chance to ask away and put this group in the hot seat. Any questions or thoughts about what you heard? >> ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS: We considered this problem about eight or nine years ago when we first proposed of doing away with a registry that I won't mention, of having a registrar of last resort that was actually operated by the registry for the purpose of picking up registrants from a register mark, then hypothetical retail channels, the registrars that might fail. Is the proposal that the registrar be operated by a registry? That was the question that I had. >>TIM COLE: I don't think we will toss questions back and forth between the groups to answer but that's something we will capture. Should it be run by the registry and that may be one of the things that can be considered in the next scenario, too, right? >>ERIC BRUNNER-WILLIAMS: Yes, yes. >>TIM COLE: For time's sake, we got to let each group report. I will turn it over to Rob, and he has got a lot more notes there. >>ROB HALL: Our group is small but good. >>MIKE ZUPKE: Before you begin, Rob, I have been asked to ask each of the speakers to state their name so we can get that for the record. >>ROB HALL: My name is Rob Hall. We also came up with the third-party holding temporary registrar ideas as has been explained by Mason. I will go on to how should the names be allocated if ICANN were to select. One, the main idea is that ICANN probably should go at it with an expression of interest. Certainly, that expression of interest should come with criteria on who can qualify. Some criteria were size, location. Price was one of the possible criterias. But the main one, I think, was the transfer be readily available so that the registrar that's gaining must say that they allow the transfers out because we have to keep mind that people may be shoved to a registrar they don't want to go to, so they should be allowed to choose. So this may end being an interim-type registrar. That was certainly one of the concerns. How to then allocate the names if there were more than one registrar, there were two solutions the group thought of. One was a random distribution across all the registrars that qualified. So if you had 100 registrars and 100,000 names, each registrar would get 1,000 names. Of course, one of the concerns there was that portfolios stay together. So you would allocate registrants as opposed to actually domain names. The other one was to auction the domain names. And then we touched on if allocation results in revenue, to whom should it go? There were four possibilities there. People incurring the costs of actually doing this such as the registrars or registries was one idea. Pay off the debts, I think that was mainly the idea of paying off any debt to ICANN. And then, of course, the losing registrar, if there are receivers involved or other creditors, this is an asset that's been determined by ICANN. I will say there was certainly some concern if ICANN were to refuse or find a gaining registrar to be unacceptable, that there would be some serious legal issues if ICANN would then sell the asset for less than the original losing registrar had sold it. So there were some concerns if the losing registrar found someone and said, you know, "I am getting $100,000 for this asset" and ICANN said, "No, I sold it for $10,000," what would be the ramifications there? And then the other possibility for funding that I thought was intriguing that the group came up with was, perhaps, we could give vouchers to the registrants that would assist them in transferring to their final registrar of choice. I thought that was a rather novel idea that, frankly, I never heard of before. So giving some of the money back to the registrants who were affected by this and saying, "Here is a voucher for your next renewal or your next transfer away." So I think that's the summary of what our group had to say. And I will turn it back to you. >>MIKE ZUPKE: Thanks, Rob. Lots of creative ideas. I appreciate you sharing some of the concerns you had as well. That's very helpful. Our group in the back? >>JEFF ECKHAUS: It is Jeff Eckhaus. I don't know if you want us to repeat. We had a lot of the same proposals. I think one of the items we had -- I think I would rather go through some of the line items how we were different. So one of them would be how should the names be allocated. I think this goes along with what Rob said, was by portfolio. It would start with contact info -- by the registrant contact info and go by the one that would be the most accurate and move down along technical and then administrative. This way we would make sure the same group names would go with that same person. There was idea that it could be computer randomly generated and we had found out from some experience that actually does not work at times because of bad contact information. And some of the other -- some of the other thoughts, I think, would be on have one registrar as the default registrar, a registrar of last resort. That would not be the registry, but they would be allocated as that registrar of last resort. I don't know, were there some other things from the group? I think we kind of wrestled with the point here of how would the gaining registrar -- why would they decline transfer? Tim, I think that was one of the issues we wrestled with here, which was if ICANN had already approved it from point one -- from scenario one, why would the gaining registrar be unacceptable or decline the transfer? >>TIM COLE: Well, for example, a gaining registrar might decide that the losing registrar charged too little for names and their customers had unexpected -- unusual expectations or perhaps they didn't have very good data on their customers and nobody wanted to take a risk of taking the names on without good data because of the customer service implications. >>ROB HALL: Tim, it's Rob. We have one more when you're done there. I would like to throw an answer to Jeff's question. They may not want to pay the $50,000 fee to transfer them. >>JEFF ECKHAUS: I think we were under the assumption, Tim, that a data escrow program would be in effect and the person would have that data and that data would not be an issue. We kind of went past that as the data issue. >>TIM COLE: Some of these scenarios are what we are living with today as opposed to what we will be with with data escrow. There was a situation -- I'm not going to name names, but there was a situation where a registrar selected someone that they wanted to transfer their names to and the receiving registrar said "No way, not unless you will give us indemnification, et" cetera, et cetera. So there are scenarios where the one -- the losing registrar designates is not interested. So with that -- >>ROB HALL: Tim, there was one more we didn't get to. I'm sorry, when we talked about "random distribution of domains to all the registrars," the other scenario was, of course, rather than breaking up the group, you pick one registrar as a winner and that could be done by a lottery, by a third-party such as Deloitte &Touche, or something independent, to say, We have had these ten that qualify and we will pick one rather than distributing across all ten. So we throw it out there just as another possibility. >>TIM COLE: Thank you, Rob. >>MIKE ZUPKE: So we are going to move ahead with the next scenario, and I am waiting for it to appear on the screen. In the third scenario, we're looking at very similar facts. But in this case the registrar has attempted to name a gaining registrar -- I'm sorry, the terminated registrar has attempted to name a gaining registrar and either the gaining registrar declined or was not approved by ICANN. ICANN's attempts of trying to find a registrar have not been successful to take over those registrations. This is similar to what Tim has been describing, a case where a registrar determines, you know, at least all the registrars who may have had an interest are showing no interest or have an adverse interest in this portfolio of names. So we would like you to take a look at the question we provided in this scenario and talk about this and come up with what sorts of solutions could be developed for this time of situation. (Group discussion). >>MIKE ZUPKE: You've still got plenty of time, but I just wanted to interrupt to invite anyone who has joined a little bit late to join one of the groups that is sort of located around the room. We've got three groups that are discussing the scenario which is on the screen, so feel free to join any of them, if you haven't already. >>TIM COLE: Okay. We're going to give you two minutes to wrap it up and then we'll come back for our final report. All right? Two minutes. Thank you. >>MIKE ZUPKE: Okay. Thank you. If you could rejoin the group, we're ready to start over here. And you ready to show your -- >>ROB HALL: Sure. >>MIKE ZUPKE: All right. Thanks. There you go. >>ROB HALL: Okay. I guess I'm up first this time. I'll start by saying in scenario 3, we thought it was very unlikely that this scenario would ever occur, so I have to say that we found it extremely unlikely this would occur. We didn't think it was very possible. But the things we did come up with were, again, the idea of parking with a virtual registrar. That one seems to be coming back again and again. The other thing would be that the registries should be asked to not delete, as they did voluntarily in the RegisterFly. So the registries, because we live in a very realtime world and some of these things take weeks or months to work through, that the registries should be asked not to delete. Two possible ways of giving them out were that the registry, if it was a thick WHOIS registry or a centralized WHOIS registry, could send the auth codes to the admin contact e-mail address they had, so gaining registrar for a transfer could go to the registry and say, "Send the auth code to the address you have on file." I know there are some concerns about that, but again, we're into scenario 3, which is, you know, no registrar is willing to take these names. One of the other ideas we came up with, interestingly enough, is that ICANN simply forces the distribution to its registrars, so ICANN says, "I've got 900 registrars, you're each taking 100 names. Here you go." You know, that would be a last resort, obviously, but certainly something we'd consider. Then we got into a little bit the other way you might find a registrar. We had this notion earlier about the registrar must support the same TLDs, and we started discussing that, and we realized that that -- you know, in a thousand TLD universe -- is going to be very unlikely. We also noted that there are many country codes out there. So I run a large Canadian registrar which has got of dot CA business, so two things came to mind: Should ICANN be working with -- if there is a large portfolio of country codes at that same registrar, should they be working with the country code manager to say, you know, in Canada, for example, Tucows, it might be easier for the customers to go to Tucows and keep the portfolios together. But also that brings to mind that you don't need to keep TLDs. You might be able to divide a TLD up. So where you may not find the gaining registrar to take the com and the info and the museum, you might find one that says, "I'll take the com, someone else take the infos," so that this concept of you have to find one registrar that can take everything, we didn't -- we didn't think was necessarily good, so you could partially distribute the portfolio. So you might find a registrar willing to take part of it. The other interesting one that we came up with was if there is a country code portfolio that this registrar is managing or if the registrar is, in fact, in a country that has a country code, which I think most are, ICANN might want to talk to the country code manager and get its list of registrars, pick the registrars there and ask them if they would like to become ICANN accredited. Because you might find you've got a huge registrar in the country that's dealing only with the country code that doesn't ICANN accredited but already in the registrar business that might be willing to become ICANN accredited and deal with the same legal language and jurisdictional issues that this client base is. So, you know, I think it really probably depends on the size of the registrar, but if we had a small registrar that was operating in a language that no other ICANN registrar operated in and that's why we couldn't find a gaining registrar, you might find another local registrar that was willing to become ICANN accredited and take on these clients. So that was another option we looked at. And I think that's all we have. >>MIKE ZUPKE: Great. Thank you very much. >>TIM COLE: Okay. This is Tim back here in the back. We're going to go to Jeff Eckhaus next, and this group had a lively discussion, I think, and so I'm going to let Jeff report on what this group came up with. >>JEFF ECKHAUS: Okay. Thanks. We actually could see this as being somewhat -- I wouldn't say a likely scenario, but it could happen, so some of our thoughts were, similar to the other group there, maybe a non-ICANN accredited registrar like someone in Nominet or -- or maybe somebody who is actually a reseller right now, have them become accredited and to have them take over the names and give them an incentive to take over -- to become ICANN accredited. That was one of the approaches. Another one would be that ICANN would have an RFP to have a registrar to act on behalf of ICANN, because we all know ICANN doesn't want to be in the registrar business, but we would have a registrar act on behalf of ICANN. And possibly ICANN would pay some of those costs and, down the road, as there were registrations or any revenue coming in, how those -- the revenue would be allocated to ICANN to recover those costs. So there would be no additional costs to the community. And some of the other thoughts about that were, we had maybe, you know, there would be a shelf life for the -- for that amount of time for that registrar, because if the gaining registrar has -- takes on, say, five-year registrations, they could service a customer for five years and receive no revenue, but possibly have a shelf life for 12 months and then allow that registrant a free transfer out to the registrar of their choice, or the registrar that will take them. This way, that person who is the ICANN -- ICANN representative or I guess working on behalf of ICANN it would be a short-term project, not a five-year or possibly 10-year. And that registrar -- they would be just almost like a receivership, to handle the names that were transferred over. They would not be soliciting new business. And I think those were the main points we had there. >>TIM COLE: Great. Thank you, Jeff. Now I'll turn it over to Mike up in front here, and he'll go to the third group. >>CAROLINE GREER: Hi. I'm Caroline Greer. We kind of agreed with Rob's group that this would be a somewhat unlikely scenario. [Speaker is off microphone] >>CAROLINE GREER: Oh, sorry. Hello. Got it. We agreed with Rob's group that this would be a somewhat unlikely scenario, so the only real solution that we could see would be to create some sort of shell holding registrar and to take up the names, perhaps set up and operate it by ICANN or some kind of not-for-profit organization. We also thought that we could maybe incentivize registrars in some way to take up the name. Some kind of, you know, monetary incentive or something like that. And the adverse consequences, you know, if the registrants did not choose to go on to transfer the names out of the shell registrar, what would you do with those particular names? And what else did we talk about? Cost recovery and perhaps costs would be recovered by ICANN. Perhaps you would look to the assets of the failing registrar and try and recover that way. That was pretty much it, wasn't it? Yeah. >>MIKE ZUPKE: Thank you. Thank you very much, Caroline, and really, I can't thank all of you enough. I've heard a good number of ideas that I know I hadn't personally thought of before, and I think that are probably very novel as a result of the collaboration that happened here today, and I'm personally grateful, but I really do believe this is -- had tremendous value to the process of informing ICANN of the way the community is thinking about ways that these sorts of situations could be handled. Sort of by way of conclusion, I'd like to just give you a little bit of insight into next steps here. It's our task -- one of the tasks that we've taken on is creating a procedure that we can make public, so that people can see exactly how we intend to address these situations going forward. Obviously, this is the first significant public comment effort in that, but we intend to, of course, continue that dialogue with the community. But as I said, I'm really grateful for all of the good thinking and the participation in this and I hope that you've found value in contributing to this process, and I hope that we can repeat these sorts of setups in the future. So with that -- >>TIM COLE: Yeah -- >>MIKE ZUPKE: Oh, yeah. >>TIM COLE: And I'd also like to thank the facilitators that helped each group sort of keep you a little bit on track, although we had plenty of very talented people from the community that were participating in each group. I was really impressed, as I walked around, that we had people from the At-Large Advisory Committee in each group, we had registrars in each group, we had community members in each group. So it was our intention to try to bring a cross-section together, so that we could really get some ideas bubbling up together and I hope you folks found this beneficial. I know we did and we thank you very much for participating and have a great rest of the meeting. Thank you. [Applause]