A guest post by Ricardo E Antequera:

On 24 September 2019, the Administrative Regulation for the National Plan for .ve Domain Names was issued by the National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL).

This is the first internal regulation regarding domain names, which had been previously limited to adopting regulations from ICANN, including their Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy.

First-come, first-served principle

In addition to a glossary of terminology in which NIC.ve is defined as the “Center of network information of the National Telecommunications Commission for the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela”, this administrative regulation establishes the terms and conditions for the registration, management, renewal, transfer and use of .ve domain names, and also applies to all extensions approved by CONATEL such as gob.ve, mil.ve and edu.ve.

The most prominent aspect of this regulation is the establishment of the principle of first-come, first-served as a general rule for the registration of domain names in Venezuela. Article 04 points out that the review of registration requests shall be transparent and non-discriminatory, in chronological order as received as long as “no right acquired by a third party over said combination of characters is harmed”.

Consequently, these regulations establish the principle of first-come, first-served which is an international standard for the registration of domain names. However, it does not clarify which aspects can be considered as harmful to rights acquired by a third party over said combination of characters, nor does it express the priority of a trade mark right. For example, it is still dubious whether likelihood of confusion will be considered by CONATEL as grounds for refusal of registration, which could be alarming, or if contrarily, as has been uniform in comparative law, only the name being identical to a previously registered domain name is grounds for refusal of registration.

Responsibility for use of domain name

The regulation also establishes that responsibility for use or lack of use of a domain name falls on its holder but also on its administrative contact, which will have special relevance for cases in which an action can fall under criminal acts, such as those established in the special law for computer crimes.

This new regulation establishes that any information provided for the purposes of obtaining a registration of a domain name shall be considered a sworn statement, and as such shall be accurate, exact, complete and updated. This aspect has special relevance when consideration is made that providing false, confusing and incomplete information for the sole purpose of registering a domain name may fall under perjury or any other criminal act that entails providing false testimony to the public officer.

One of the obligations that the regulation imposes on the applicant of a domain name at the time of registration is to ensure that they shall guarantee that the use shall be for legal purposes solely without affecting or interfering with third-party rights, any laws in addition to informing CONATEL of any fact that may be in violation of this administrative regulation as well as keeping the information provided for the domain name updated. 

New registration procedure

The regulation establishes a new registration procedure providing for a prior step for the registration consisting of a “reservation” of the domain name in order to verify its availability. This reservation shall be valid for whomever made it for a maximum of five business days, in which payment of official fees shall be made at the rate established and linking it to the reserved domain through the NIC.ve portal, after which the registration shall be effectively registered. Should the reservation period expire without a registration being completed, then the domain name shall be released.

It is a first mechanism for regulating domain names in Venezuela, and may well be the most important since 2000 when Venezuela adopted the ICANN regulations for dispute resolution. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of this regulation is the discretionary powers that fall on CONATEL officials to determine what is against morals, good customs or public policy, putting at risk, among other rights, that of freedom of expression.  

Ricardo E Antequera is a partner of Antequera Parilli & Rodríguez and a member of MARQUES