Public Comment: Proposal for Renewal of the .NET Registry Agreement

MARINA DEL REY, CA - Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number (ICANN) is today posting a proposed draft renewal agreement for the operation of the .NET registry. According to the Corporation, the current .NET Registry Agreement is due to expire on June 30, 2011.

ICANN's gTLD registry agreements provide for presumptive renewal so long as certain requirements are met. The agreements also provide that upon renewal, changes may be made in the agreement to render the terms similar to other comparable agreements. The proposed renewal agreement from Verisign includes modified provisions to bring the .NET agreement into line with other comparable agreements (e.g. BIZ, COM, INFO, ORG), including terms such as traffic data, limitation of liability, indemnification, assignment, and notice provisions.

In addition to the changes to bring .NET into conformance with other agreements, Verisign has requested a change to give more flexibility for the registry to take action to prevent the registration of particular domain names when necessary in order to protect the security and stability of the DNS and the Internet – such as the actions that were taken by Verisign and other registries in coordination with ICANN in order to mitigate the threat from the Conficker virus.

One other significant change to the agreement would give the registry operator more flexibility to offer training, technical support, marketing or incentive programs for the purpose of supporting the development of the Internet in underserved markets.

The appendices to the agreement are also generally consistent with the current agreement. There are limited updates and deletion of obsolete provisions to Appendices 4, 7 and 10 – readily apparent in the redline document. These updates reflect changes to technical protocols and refinement of reporting requirements.