ICANN staff recently prepared a “Revised Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) Policy Status Report (PSR)” (see PDF here) for the consideration of GNSO Council, and to guide any future policy development at ICANN. They even prepared a red-line version (see PDF here) to show what changes were made since the public comment period which ended in April 2022. The main change is the last 4 pages of the document, which has a list of “suggested improvements” submitted by the community.
My own company’s submission can be read here. Starting at the bottom of page 8 of the main PDF, I submitted numerous topics that should be addressed in a review. For example:
- explicit opt-out provision
- limitation period for complaints
- optional “legal contact” within WHOIS
- time to respond to complaints should be expanded, based on the age of the domain
- “registered in bad faith” date to be explicitly set as the creation date of the domain
- explicity permit transfers of ownership within related entities without impacting UDRP date tests
- formal mediation step
- ensure court review (for which I submitted an entirely separate PDF!)
- merging URS and UDRP into a single procedure
- greater oversight for providers and panelists
Now here’s the fun part — go try to find these referenced in the ICANN staff prepared document! They’re not there! (I suggest others who submitted their own comments review the ICANN summary, to see whether their own input was ignored.)
This demonstrates the bad faith on the part of ICANN staff, that public input that does not fit their agenda is completely ignored.
In conclusion, as I’ve pointed out repeatedly, ICANN public comment periods are a sham.