Proposed Final 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement

After an extended period of negotiations, ICANN is posting a Proposed Final 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) for public comment.

As a result of negotiations that have gone on for nearly 18 months, a new 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement is now ready. All remaining differences have been settled and ICANN and the members of the Registrar Negotiating Team have achieved an agreement on all issues.

On 7 March 2013, ICANN posted its version of the 2013 RAA for public comment, noting some areas of disagreement between ICANN and the Registrar Negotiating Team (NT). In addition, some of the specifications posted for comment were ICANN versions only. Since the March 7th posting, the Registrar NT has engaged in frequent negotiation sessions with ICANN in order to bring to closure to all of the open negotiation topics and to consider the community comments received from the 7 March posting. As a result, at ICANN‘s public meeting in Beijing, China, ICANN and the Registrar NT announced that they had reached agreement in principle on each of the outstanding items highlighted in the March posting version. The documents posted today reflect ICANN and the Registrar NT’s agreements and are the Proposed Final 2013 RAA.

To allow for transparency into the proposed final version of the 2013 RAA, and to allow community input on the revisions to the RAA since the March 7th posting, ICANN is opening a full comment forum.

ICANN thanks the Registrar Negotiating Team (NT) for its continued engagement in good faith negotiations on the RAA. The RAA posted today reflects hard-fought concessions on many of key issues raised throughout the negotiations.

After review of the comment received, the Proposed Final 2013 RAA will be reviewed to determine if further changes are warranted. Input on the areas that have changed since the 7 March 2013 posting will be of particular help.

The base RAA documents:

• Proposed 2013 RAA [PDF, 311 KB]
• Redline Showing Changes Between Proposed 2013 RAA and 7 March 2013 RAA Posting [PDF, 293 KB]
• Redline Showing Changes Between Proposed 2013 RAA and the 2009 RAA [PDF, 343 KB]
• A Summary of Changes from the 2009 RAA [PDF, 496 KB] is also available.

Public Comment Box Link

A few members of the Registrar Negotiating Team have offered their own reflections on the process and the Agreement.

Matt Serlin, Chair of the Registrar Stakeholder Group:

“On behalf of the entire Registrar Negotiating Team, I am pleased to see negotiations on the 2013 RAA have come to a conclusion after a long process in which both parties worked long and hard to resolve difficult issues. The outcome of these discussions is a new RAA which will be impactful for everyone involved in the DNS industry including every ICANN accredited registrar. We look forward to continuing to work with ICANN as we now move from the negotiations phase to implementing the numerous new requirements contained in the 2013 RAA.”

James Bladel, GoDaddy.com:

“The new 2013 RAA represents over a year’s work between registrars and ICANN Staff, and is an important milestone in the development of the DNS ecosystem. It raises the bar for service providers, provides new tools for law enforcement, and gives registrars long-term stability in their relationship with ICANN.”

Volker Greimann, Key-Systems Group:

“ICANN and the registrars negotiation teams have worked long and hard towards the completion of a 2013 RAA to address the difficult issues put before us. Despite complicated issues, sometimes moving goalposts and further complications were able to conclude the negotiations with a result that we hope will be a great step ahead for the community. I am especially pleased that the negotiated 2013 RAA recognizes the need for fair and balanced exemption process where applicable law prohibits the direct implementation of certain terms within new requirements, such as the data retention specification.”

Rob Hall, Momentous.com:

“It isn’t just the new RAA that is significant, it is the collaborative way it was created.  Those of us who participated saw the dawn of a new day at ICANN, one where getting things done for the community as a whole takes precedence over any single concern.”