Factions Want to Impose Uniform Rapid Suspension on .Net: Urgent
Business Constituency may propose fresh regulations for .net.
The comment period for the proposed renewal of the .net registry agreement ends on May 10, yet no one has commented to date. But there will be comments by time the comment period closes, and one could be a bombshell: a proposal to apply the untested Uniform Rapid Suspension scheme to .net.
Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) is a trademark rights protection mechanism that is likely to apply to fresh top level domain names whenever they finally come out. It lets trademark holders file a quick UDRP at a fraction of the cost. As of now any domains that are won through URS are merely suspended, not handed to the complainant. But that may well change.
My initial fear was that URS would come out on fresh TLDs and then be applied to .net and .com down the road. But it’s possible URS will be applied to .net at the same time as fresh TLDs if certain people get their way!
A draft public comment from the business constituency wants certain aspects of fresh TLD registry agreements to be included in VeriSign’s .net renewal, counting URS. You can see the discussion and draft public comment here.
You know how this works. If a comment like this is submitted at the end of the comment period it will be hard to respond. So I urge you to comment on the proposed .net registry agreement. Make it clear that, for the most part, .net ought to continue to be run the way it is today without any of the fresh rules being invented for fresh TLDs.
You can comment by sending an email to [email protected]. View current comments here.
