ICANN, Domains, Registrars & Trademarks

A (Dirty Filthy) Registrar Perspective

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What is a Registrar?

• Company offering domain name registration services. Within ICANN context, “ICANN accredited” OR a reseller of an ICANN accredited registrar

• Most sell other services such as hosting, email services, SSL etc.,

• Margin on a domain registration is tiny

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Why do they care about ICANN?

ICANN’s contract governs how we operate• The Registrar Stakeholder Group is part of ICANN

GNSO (Generic Naming Support Organisation)

• Registrars actively involved in policy development

• Different business models => different views on issues

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How do we make Money?

• Hosting and other services have better margin than domains

• Why do you care? Better understanding of business model etc.,

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Piggy In The Middle

Dealing with trademark issues is NOT our job

• There are dispute mechanisms (UDRP, URS etc)• Registrars & hosts are intermediaries – not our role

to act as arbiters of IP disputes. • 99% of the time we don’t know about the alleged

infringement until we are notified• DMCA is US only. Seriously.

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What Can A Registrar Do?

It’ll depend on the situation• Are we the registrar for the domain? • Do we host the domain? • If we are ONLY the registrar we can only pull the plug

entire (nuclear option)• DMCA is US only. Seriously. (I know I’ve already said

that!)

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Cutting Off The Domain Kills It

If the registrar pulls the domain EVERYTHING associated with it is taken offline. EVERYTHING.

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