One of the “hot topics” at the ICANN meeting in Costa Rica next week will be the ongoing negotiations around the RAA.
The RAA is basically the core document and contract that all ICANN accredited registrars have to sign with ICANN in order to be able to offer domain name registration services.
(Oddly enough UDRP providers aren’t bound by anything as strict..)
The first contract dates back to 2001 and was replaced with the 2009 version. However some felt that the 2009 RAA did not cover areas that they felt needed to be addressed. As a registrar I have very mixed feelings about this entire debacle, something which I may address at a later stage.
In any case a small group of registrars have been negotiating with ICANN staff since shortly after the Dakar meeting.
While some people will find the progress to date encouraging, others will, inevitably, view it in a negative light. Be that as it may there is a detailed document outlining the current state of play.
Negotiations have probably not been helped by ICANN’s choice of team combined with their CEO making statements about the negotations’ outcome, which have done little to improve relations between registrars and ICANN.
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