If you’re a regular reader of our blog then you’ll be aware of our “battle” with ICANN over the 2013 RAA and Irish / EU data privacy legislation.
We’ve written about it several times over the last few months and our position on this matter has been very clear and very public.
We’ve been engaging with ICANN and their legal team and staff since last year and we are finally seeing progress.
Last night ICANN put our waiver requests out for public comment, which means that we could see them being accepted within the next 60 to 90 days.
You can review what we’ve requested at the link above.
Is it perfect?
No, but we believe that it is a reasonable compromise. Data privacy, protection and retention laws are currently in flux due in no little part to both the ongoing review of data protection legislation at the EU level and the as yet unknown impact of the recent ECJ decision on data retention.
As we’ve mentioned in the past, we currently cannot offer new TLDs as we needed to be on the 2013 contract with ICANN. Since that contract, in our view, was not compatible with Irish and EU law, we could not and would not sign it.
After lengthy discussions with our legal team we have decided to sign the 2013 RAA as we are optimistic with respect to the waiver requests we’ve submitted. We also need to be pragmatic. We need to be able to offer new TLDs as there is demand from our clients and as a business we need to be able to deal with that.
So we finally signed the 2013 contract with ICANN earlier this week. We’re currently finalising the various details and other paperwork that is needed, but this means that we are now in a position to proceed to contract with the new TLD registry operators.
I’m not sure how long finalising the 2013 contract with ICANN will take, but hopefully it shouldn’t be too complicated.
What next?
We’re currently in discussions with multiple new TLD registries and have been for some time. We signed our first new TLD contract with DNS Belgium earlier this week as their contract wording allowed us to. We plan to sign many more such contracts in the coming weeks.
In terms of actually being able to offer new TLDs to you all .. I’m not sure how long this will take us, but we will be keeping you all in the loop.
So, as they say, “watch this space”
Related articles
- Notice of Potential Grant of Registrar Data Retention Waiver Request (icann.org)
- ICANT Cope With ICANN! (blacknight.com)
- Art. 29 Data Protection Working Party To ICANN – Maybe You’re Hard Of Hearing? (internetnews.me)
- Article 29 Working Party To ICANN – EU Registrars Exempt From Data Retention Requirements (internetnews.me)
- European Data Protection Supervisor Smacks ICANN Over Privacy Issues With 2013 RAA (internetnews.me)
- Dear ICANN Our Hands Are Tied. This Makes Me Sad (blacknight.com)
- Euro registrars miffed about ICANN privacy delays (domainincite.com)
- ICANN Publish Data Retention Waiver Details (internetnews.me)
- EU body tells ICANN that 2013 RAA really is illegal (domainincite.com)
