Kurt Pritz

Country:	USA
Email:	kurt.pritz [at] icann.org
Website:	[pritz-immobilien.at pritz-immobilien.at]
LinkedIn:	[kurt-pritz Kurt Pritz]
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Kurt Pritz is a practicing attorney and the Senior Vice President of Stakeholder Relations at ICANN, where he oversees the growth of ICANN's Multistakeholder Model, as well as ICANN's key stakeholder relationships. He is also overseeing the implementation of the New gTLD Program. His high-profile work includes representing ICANN at judicial and legal hearings in Washington, D.C..

Prior to joining ICANN, Pritz was the Vice President of Production at Walt Disney Imagineering, where he directed the manufacturing and engineering of theme park shows worldwide. He has also worked as a plant manager for the Eaton Corporation.

He holds a B.S. and M.S. in Physics, an M.B.A. and a J.D.

Role within ICANN

Kurt was appointed as a Vice President of ICANN in September 2003. He was promoted as Senior Vice President for Stakeholder Relations on December 2006. As VP for Stakeholder Relations, Kurt serves as spokesperson of the internet body on different issues particularly the ICANN new gTLD program. He led the coordination of multiple public consultations regarding the program until it was approved and implemented by the ICANN Board. Kurt continues to provide information, presentations, answers questions and discusses issues related to the new gTLD program as they arise.

In March 2011, during the GNSO Council meeting at ICANN 43 in Costa Rica, Kurt informed the community that the ICANN Board plans to implement the "Target Tyme Variance" system in determining how each new gTLD application will be grouped into batches. According to him an applicant will pick his or her "target time" to process the application at the TLD Application System (TA) then click the submit button. The application batches will be divided based on the fastest applicant down to the slowest from each of five ICANN geographic regions in a round robin method. He also said the applicants will have the opportunity to try out the system to determine and adjust their response time. He also explained that random selection is not feasible because of legal issues.

Video Presentations on New gTLD

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Congressional Hearings on New gTLD

In December, 2011, Kurt Pritz served as one of the witnesses during Senate Hearing on ICANN's new gTLD Program. He strongly defended the program against its critics including the Association of National Advertisers, and its anti-TLD off-shoot, CRIDO. It was not the first time that he was called to such a hearing, he also attended at least a similar conducted by the House of Representatives hearing earlier that year.

Statement Regarding HostExploit's Accusation Against eNom

In 2010, HostExploit, an anti-malware research group accused eNom, an ICANN accredited registrar for hosting an unusually large number of malicious websites and the preferred registrar for pharmaceutical spammers. The group also accused the company's domain name resellers of violating ICANN rules by allowing registrants to provide inaccurate information in the Whois data base. In response to the issue, Kurt informed the research group that ICANN will investigate the issue. eNom will be asked to provide its response to the accusations and appropriate actions will be done.

Action Against RegisterFly

RegisterFly was a very problematic registrar and its accreditation was terminated by ICANN in 2009. The company started its business as a reseller for eNom. In 2004, RegisterFly purchased Top Class Names, Inc., an ICANN accredited registrar. After the acquisition, the new owners of the company's assumed the accreditation and role as a registrar and its name was change to RegisterFly. In 2005, ICANN started receiving complaints from consumers due to poor service. The number of complaints escalated from being unresponsive and 30 minutes call hold time to overcharging of credit cards, domain names being deleted and stolen from registrants. In 2007, Kurt issued a Notice of Breach and to the company for violating several provisions of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA). He instructed the RegisterFly to correct all its violations and resolve all customer complaints. He also warned the company that ICANN will terminate its accreditation agreement if it will not comply with the RAA. He also sent a Notice of Audit to the company that ICANN will inspect and get a complete copy of the data of all the domain names under its sponsorship. Due to the company's non-compliance, Kurt requested its counsel to send a second Notice of Breach and eventually ICANN filed a lawsuit against the company. On March 28, 2007, Kurt submiited a detailed declaration to the court about RegisterFly's violations of the RAA, which affected thousand of customers. ICANN terminated the company accreditation immediately after a court order.

Top-Level Domain