ICANN’s board of directors has formally approved amendments to its standard registry and registrar contracts aimed at forcing companies to take action against domains involved in DNS abuse.
At its meeting last weekend, the board passed a resolution amending the Registrar Accreditation Agreement and Base gTLD Registry Agreement to include tougher rules on tackling abuse.
Registrars must now “promptly take the appropriate mitigation action(s) that are reasonably necessary to stop, or otherwise disrupt, the Registered Name from being used for DNS Abuse” when provided with evidence of such abuse.
Registries have a similar obligation to take action, but the action might be to refer the abusive domain to the appropriate registrar.
The rules follow the now industry-standard definition of DNS abuse: “malware, botnets, phishing, pharming, and spam (when spam serves as a delivery mechanism for the other forms of DNS Abuse listed)”.
The changes were crafted by ICANN along with registries and registrars and voted through late last year by a hefty majority of both camps.
The two contracts are now in the hands of the ICANN CEO and her lawyers for final action before becoming enforceable.
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