What is ICANN's motivation for complying with law-enforcement agency demands? Quite a number of them have proven themselves to be bad actors in the past, and there are provisions in civilized society that restrict them from actually demanding things, absent a specific court order. Which shouldn't really apply to an international regulatory body in a prescriptive manner by most standards - and if it gets such orders it needs to leave for another flag of convenience that doesn't cripple a global infrastructural standard.

"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it" should be the ideal we aspire to. LEA and intelligence-agency intervention in the Internet system is typically damage to our liberty-printing machine, one way or another. Their incentive structure offers no benefits and poses a lot of difficulties in dealing with a free Internet. Pressure from them should be expected as an open adversary to the free Internet, and defended against.

They might've proven themselves to be bad actors, but they're backed by national governments, and that gives them a lot of sway when it comes to these things. LEAs do have a legitimate interest in this kind of thing because domain names can be used for fraudulent and otherwise illegal purposes, which is why they're involved in the process. However, it's up to the other parties to moderate this influence where possible, which is what the registrar constituency fought for in the negotiations.

Believe it or not, what the LEAs were looking for in the first place was significantly more extensive then what ended up in the RAA. Here are their recommendations: https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/raa-law-enforcem...

Actually has value for law enforcement despite what some commenters seem to be saying here. For example if the contact info is not valid then it would be a quick and easy process to take the site offline for a cooperative registrar.

Law enforcement were still the ones who demanded it. ICANN and the registrars didn't particularly want this. In fact, what the LEAs were originally demanding was full verification and validation of all contact details supplied to the registrar.

I know this, because I work for a registrar and was privy to the 2013 RAA negotiations.

I also work for a registrar. Keep in mind that the policy is also an opportunity for registrars to charge for taking a domain back off of hold the same way that they can charge for bringing a domain out of redemption over and above what the cost is for doing so.

Yup, they can, but monetising that kind of thing would be pretty scummy. After all, section five of the spec states that all we need to do is put it on client hold and prevent outgoing transfers, though we can potentially terminate it by putting it in redemption. Unlike redemption, which is pretty costly, there's no real need to charge people to unsuspend the domain.

No doubt, some assholes out there will try it, but I know we won't.

Why do you feel (honest question here) that charging something or anything would be scummy?

"there's no real need to charge people to unsuspend the domain"

By that token there is no need to charge people for many things that businesses charge for that don't cost them any money at all (or a nominal amount) and are pure profit. Or even to charge for bringing a domain out of redemption over and above the actual reimbursed cost for doing so. The fact also that some registrars charge typically or don't charge shouldn't really enter into the picture of "scummy" or "not scummy" by any company that chooses to have a different process.

Not that by what I am saying it should matter but the mere fact that you are putting a name on hold means that your support or customer service costs should in theory increase. If a name is on hold then that means a customer could call or write an email which has to be addressed by a person possibly. And there is a cost to providing that service. It is not zero obviously.

No, I don't feel that charging for something is scummy. I do feel that charging for unsuspending a domain due to WAP is scummy. If some other registrar wasn't to do it, fair enough, but given the cost of unsuspending them approaches zero, unless we need to contact them on the phone, by post, or something else that requires human interaction, I feel the unsuspension fee should be nominal at most.