[ncdnhc-discuss] Fwd: [nc-deletes] Minutes - Conference Call, November 15

[DannyYounger at cs.com]

Alejandro,

The minutes of the November 15 teleconference of the Deletes Task Force 
indicate that with respect to Issue 1 (Uniform delete practice after domain 
name expiry by registrars), "It was generally agreed that it would be 
desirable for non-renewed domains to be consistently deleted by registrars 
within the 45 day auto-renew grace period."  

Having read that comment, I tend to wonder if TF participants are aware of 
the fact that not all registries currently support an auto-renew grace period 
-- "The .name Registry Operator does not support an Auto-Renew Grace Period. 
Upon the expiration of the term of a domain name registration or SLD E-mail 
address registration, the registration is cancelled unless its term has been 
explicitly extended by the sponsoring registrar."  
http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/name/registry-agmt-appc-5-02jul01.htm

This raises the question, is perhaps the .name approach a better way of 
attending to the issue?  I know that when it comes to matters such as my own 
driver's license, there is no grace period whatsoever... and there is no 
"confusion"... if I haven't renewed my license by the expiration date, my 
license to drive is instantly revoked.  The Department of Motor Vehicles 
sends out renewal notices sufficiently in advance of the expiration date (by 
regular postal mail) and I ignore such mail at my own peril.  

As I see it, the primary problem these days is that far too many registrars 
rely almost exclusively on e-mail correspondence to deal with renewals, and 
the community already is under siege from so much spam from both registrars 
and re-sellers that it is very easy to overlook a genuine renewal notice 
(which then leads to all these concerns over inadvertent deletions).  Perhaps 
as a matter of prudent policy we should require all registrars to send 
renewal notices by regular mail... as they don't seem to have any problem 
sending deceptive renewal notices by regular mail (slamming), they equally 
shouldn't have any complaints sending genuine renewal notices in such a 
manner.  

If we're going to have some type of uniform policy to minimize registrant 
confusion, why don't we begin by evaluating the merits of the .name approach 
as compared to the approach utilized by .com/.net/.org/.info/.biz?  We 
shouldn't make the mistake of instantly assuming that the processes utilized 
by these dominant registries are inherently superior to those introduced by a 
recent newcomer.