Good Practice Terms for Registrars
1. These are the Good Practice terms (version 21.06) referred to in Sections 1.9, 1.14 and 5.1 of the Registrar Agreement.
2. These Good Practice terms set out certain expectations, among other things, about provision of pricing and service information, data accuracy, technical and business competence, and the publication of information about charges and service levels.
3. They apply to Accredited Registrars and are intended to benefit registrants who register their domains that way.
Introduction
4. The Good Practice terms were inspired by those in use by the .UK Registry (Nominet), but they are not exactly the same, since they take account of local practice and expectations.
5. In these Good Practice terms, "we", "us" etc means CI Domain Registry Ltd, and "you", "your" etc means the accredited registrar to whom they apply.
6. We recognise that registrars who are accredited with CI Domain Registry operate a broad range of business models. For example, some focus on trademarks and brand protection or B2B (business to business) services while some focus on dealing with end-users and consumers. Some registrars only register names on their own account.
7. Some of these terms are only relevant if you offer services to third parties. If you only register domain names in your own name, the name of your business or company or in the name of a subsidiary, not all the requirements of the Good Practice Terms may apply.
Informing registrants and end-users
8. The internet industry is highly competitive, offering a wide choice of services and options.
9. Registrars decide for themselves how best to structure their relationship with their customers and this has led to a dynamic and competitive market for internet services.
10. It is not the intention of these Terms to seek to limit this in any way. However, we consider it essential that your customers (that is, your Registrants) are well informed and understand the service that they are buying.
11. Accordingly you must (in advance):
(a) make your customers aware of the charges associated with domain name registration, renewal and maintenance.
(b) give details of the domain name related services you provide, which are relevant to this customer, information on how to invoke the service, any charges payable and how long you take to carry out the service;
(c) make your customers aware of changes to your charges a reasonable time before they take effect;
(d) give your customers full details of the method, availability and cost (if any) of obtaining customer service.
and you must also
(e) act quickly after getting a request to register, modify or cancel a domain name registration.
(f) take reasonable steps to update contact details for registrants and other authorised contacts soon after you know that the current ones are out of date or wrong.
Registrant data
12. The Registrar Agreement contains several requirements which mean that you must ensure you give us correct information about your Registrant(s).
13. What this means is that you must not knowingly provide poor quality Registrant data.
14. We recognise that many Registrars provide online registration systems which Registrants interact with directly. So, we don't expect you to check all the data provided manually.
15. However, if you find out that a Registrant has provided poor quality data you should attempt to correct the data. And if you know that a particular Registrant often gives poor quality data, we expect that you should take it up with your customer to stop that happening.
16. We have seen instances where Agents and/or Registrars routinely register domain names in the name of their own company without the knowledge or permission of their customer. This breaks the terms of the Registrar contract with us, because it can cause major problems for the intended beneficiary of the rights under the Contract of Registration (for example not being able to prove to us, as the Registry, that they are the legitmate owner of those rights).
17. So, when you receive a request to register a domain name for a customer you must register the domain name in the customer's name unless there are exceptional circumstances. (We recognise that occasionally there might be circumstances where it is appropriate for something different to happen. One example of this might be when the registrant-of-record is holding a domain name registration under a trust., such as an executor or administrator of the estate of a deceased person. Another example might be where the registrant-of-record is a firm of lawyers, patent attorneys, brand consultants or other professional intermediaries acting for clients during a start-up of a new business).
18. However even if exceptional circumstances do apply, you may only register a domain name in your name (or that of a connected organisation) with explicit and informed consent of your customer. We may ask you to prove you have this, so you must keep evidence of their consent and must provide it (including providing verifiable details of their identity) to us.
19. For the avoidance of doubt, this means that registrars, including resellers, may not offer proxy registration (a.k.a. "WHOIS Privacy") for .GG or .JE domains because we need to know with whom we have a contract.
In the event that any of your customers are concerned about the privacy of their personal data, they should be directed to our Privacy/Disclosure Statement which confirms that we do not publish the identity of registrants or any of their details (except for a company or other organisation name if -- and only if -- one has been supplied in the (optional) 'Registrant Organisation' field).
Explaining the contract of registration to your customer
20. Registrants should understand that registering a .GG or .JE domain name involves them asking you (as agent) to bind them to a contract with CI Domain Registry.
21. We may need to rely on this contract later, for example if we cancel a domain name for non-payment of annual fees, or suspend it for some other breach of the Registration Agreement.
22. For this reason we require that registrars make registrants aware of the current version of the Terms of Domain Name Registration before the Contract is made with us and at least annually thereafter. You must keep in mind that you provide a contractual promise to us confirming that you have made your customer aware of the Contract and we may ask you to prove how you do this.
23. Notwithstanding the above, you should always keep in mind that you must not anything which might mislead anyone about your relationship with us (nor may you permit anyone else to) do so.
Support
24. We appreciate that Registrars need different levels of support.
25. To help Registrars get up to speed as quickly as possible the following services are available:
(a) a test registration facility;
(b) Online information about GG and JE domain name registration.
26. We do not currently offer courses (whether online or otherwise) but we are always ready to assist our registrars and you should contact us by email with any questions.
Cancellation
27. When you register a domain name, it remains registered until cancelled. You must have the agreement of your Registrant to cancel a domain name registration. If we receive a complaint about cancellation of a domain registration, we may ask you to show us evidence of that agreement (which might be part of your standard terms).
28. If your Registrant tells you that they no longer want the domain to be registered, then you have their explicit agreement to cancellation. Alternatively, your contract with the customer might allow you to cancel a registration in some other circumstances (such as if they break some condition that is in your contract with them). If we receive a complaint, we may ask you to show us evidence of your authority.
29. If your Registrant tells you that they no longer wish to keep a domain name registered, you must cancel the registration, by requesting a DELETE operation from our systems. Unless you do so before the anniversary of registration a further Annual Fee will become due, and this will be deducted automatically from your account, whether it is in credit or otherwise. We allow a grace period during which you will receive a full refund for any domains which are deleted subsequently, so long as this is no later than 31 days after the annual fee was charged.
30. If your registrant has instructed you to request cancellation of their domain name you must carry out their instructions in a timely manner.
31. Even if your Registrant has agreed to terms allowing you to cancel within a shorter period, we expect you to give your registrant the full benefit of this concessionary grace period, and therefore you should not cancel domain names in any event within 28 days of the start of the Annual Fee Grace Period, without having explicit instructions.
32. Where a Registrant's contract with us has finally come to an end (and their name removed finally from the Register) we will usually be able to allow, as a courtesy, a former Registrant to re-apply for the domain name concerned within 21 days of final removal, but we do not have to do this.
Modifications
33. If your registrant has instructed you to make changes to their domain name you must carry out their instructions in a timely manner.
34. You may only make changes to a domain name if you have the agreement of its Registrant, whether upon their explicit request or otherwise (e.g. where your terms allow you temporarily to suspend a domain in some circumstances). However you may never change a domain's Registrant to yourself (or a third party) unless you have been explicitly instructed so to do by the Registrant. Domains which are no longer required must be cancelled, by requesting a DELETE operation from our systems.
Resellers
35. If you operate a reseller programme you need to be aware that, as between you and us, we consider you to be responsible for the actions of your resellers, in other words the actions of your resellers are your responsibility as you are the Registrar.
36. The Registrar Agreement makes the actions of your resellers your responsibility as regards the relationship between you and us, so if we find out that your resellers are breaking these Good Practice Terms, it becomes your responsibility to stop them or to stop them being one of your resellers.
37. If your reseller breaches the registrar Contract then we would take steps as if you have breached the Contract yourself.
Handling complaints
38. As a Registrar we ask you to provide, and publish details of a complaints procedure that your customers can use if they are dissatisfied with your service.
How we ensure compliance with Good Practice
38. These Good Practice Terms form part of the Registrar Contract you have agreed with us. If you do not agree with any of them, you must tell us and stop being an Accredited Registrar.
39. We might ask you from time to time to tell us how you comply with the Good Practice Terms.
40. If we find that you are not complying with some or all of these terms, we will tell you so and give you an opportuntity to put it right
41. If you do not do this within a reasonable time, we may tell you that we want to terminate the Registrar Agreement.
42. If we do terminate the Registrar Agreement, it will mean that -- after an appropriate time -- you will no longer be able to have access to our computer systems nor benefit from wholesale prices.
43. It will also mean that your registrants will have to find another Accredited Registrar to act as their registrar.
44. We will act reasonably and consider carefully when we are deciding what to do, taking into account your history, what the problem is, and what would be an appropriate response. Our approach will be to work with you to help you understand what you need to do without affecting our rights (e.g. to be paid any amounts that are properly due).
Scope
45. At the time of issue of this document , it applies to domain name services that we provide for .GG and .JE. We may offer other services and other types of registration (such as other top-level domains). If these terms are to apply to those services, then we expect that very similar obligations shall apply, but we will tell you if they do, a reasonable time before they start to apply.