ICANN to Verisign: You can’t implement WLS, yet.

Writes Paul Twomey to Chuck Gomes: We understand that VeriSign has stated it intends to launch offering the WLS to the public in October 2003. We wish to reiterate, and reaffirm our mutual understanding, that the WLS may not be launched until 1) negotiations on conditions for offering the WLS are final and the contractual amendments to the .com and .net agreements effected and 2) in accordance with our Memorandum of Understanding with the United States Department of Commerce, the Department of Commerce has approved the contractual amendments as required by Section 1 of the MoU, as amended.On the substance of WLS implementation, ICANN accepts Verisign’s proposal for implementing registrant notification, and suggests an alternative to condition (c), the registrar “black-out” provision. The alternative proposal is to introduce penalties for registrar abuse of “insider knowledge” into the RRA, review enforcement of that provision in the VeriSign neutrality audit, and to introduce a general blackout period for WLS subscriptions which would start 10 days prior to the scheduled expiration date of a domain name, and would continue through the duration of the auto-renew grace period.Assuming that GNSO’s deletes policy becomes effective, this approach will adress the concern I had raised about this last year.