The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF virtual intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> We all live in a digital world. We all need it to be open and safe. We all want to trust ‑‑
>> And to be trusted.
>> We all despise control.
>> And desire freedom.
>> We are all united.
>> EVERTON RODRIGUES: Hi, everybody. My name is every ton Rodriguez. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everyone. Before everything, I hope that you and your families and friends are safe and well. Welcome to our IGF 2021 Open Forum. I have here a presentation.
Today we are going to be talking about the 11 years of the .br domain name conflict resolution using SACI‑Adm. I'm every ton Rodriguez and work at NIC.br as Expert Advisor for the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee, the CGI.br. And joining us today we have on site a legal department manager and Diego Sigoli, also from our legal department. And we also have the great staff from the IGF Secretariat who have been working so hard to make this event happen, as well as other colleagues working behind the scenes as moderators and reporters so thank you so much to all of them before we start.
So, this is the first activity, four activities proposed and organized by CGI.br, so stay tuned for our three workshop it's during the week.
And today we're going to be talking about the results of SACI‑Adm, and NIC.br solution to mitigate conflicts related to domain name registration, so here we have a few words of what we'll see today. The background of what led to SACI‑Adm solution. What or how it works, and what it is, the results and the incentive to dejudicialization.
So, a few words about .br. It was delegated in 1989 before ‑‑ even before the first Internet connection took place in Brazil. Back then we had academics using other networks, so today we have 4.8 million domain names registered, which puts us in the 6th place among ccTLDs, and not only the registration is meaningful, but also the use of .br, so 92% of Brazilian companies use .br for their businesses.
And the revenue of .br registration is used for a series of NIC.br and CGI.br activities. At this point it's good to point out that NIC.br is a private nonprofit civil entity so it's always good to mention that. Next slide.
Now, background about why NIC.br created SACI‑Adm. Here we have an example. Let's say that someone backing ‑‑ until 2010, let's say that someone violates trademark. In Brazil we use first‑come‑first‑serve designation policy, but the person who domain name violated and the use of this domain name. So that brings to potential ‑‑ that has to pension to lead to errors and mistakes, so perhaps this user wasn't aware of the trademark or maybe not, we don't know that. The point is that back in 2010, we could only tell that this user should file a law suit against the first registrant. But that doesn't look actually like a solution, and the reason why is that in Brazil, we have 212 million inhabitants or 212 million Brazilians, and the Brazilian judiciary system is currently dealing with 80 million law suits that basically talk about everything. They deal with everything from diverse frauds and all the other sorts of litigations that we see everywhere. So, domain names issues and domain name related law suits have been taken up to 8 years to be judged, and that's not even close to the dynamics that the Internet demands, so 8 years for a decision related to the domain names, it's way too far from what matters.
So, one of the motivations comes from the domain names are always registered first come first serve as I told, and our contract is very clear on the registration that lies on the registrant. In 2010 there was a published resolution approving which brings us to the current situation in 2010. So, at this point, it is important to say that CGI.br resolutions are not binding and CGI.br is a committee composed of members from the governmental sector and a majority of Civil Society members. On the other hand, trademark law is binding as it is a law, and according to Brazilian law, NIC.br can prevent access to courts, so SACI‑Adm was shaped to be an administrative solution which can't be confused with arbitration that has specific laws in Brazil.
The attention of SACI‑Adm happens when a user registers a new domain name and to the contract if the registrant or third party initiates a procedure it will be made public on the website in Portuguese and the procedure briefly explained here is composed by the third party, the registrant, and the three NIC.br accredited solutions WIPO, CDBC, chamber of commerce in Brazil, and ADI, so proposes to be done by one of the accredited solutions and the complainant also chooses an accredited institution, and one or three experts to judge this procedure, which will go through expert analysis. And during this analysis, domain name transfers are not allowed.
So, the complainant must prove that the .br domain name was registered or is being used in bad faith and that it is identical or similar enough to create confusion with the trademark owned by the complainant or with other titles, names, or even domain names owned by him or her. So, it's not only a trademark that has precedence to this case, so if the domain name was already registered before by the interested party, then it can be claimed as a SACI‑Adm procedure.
So, some advantages of SACI‑Adm are that the costs are born by the complainant, and the amount is fixed so you start the process by already knowing how much you're going to spend during the process. The decisions are ‑‑ one of the three options you can see there. The domains should be maintained, transferred, or canceled. The process takes approximately a maximum of 90 days. And NIC.br itself executes the experts' final decision, and if the litigating party commences a law suit in 15 days since the expert decision was published, NIC.br won't implement it as it will be decided by the Court.Le.
So, here we have our timeline of results. Oops. I'm sorry. Well, let's see how SACI‑Adm results so far. This is the timeline with more than 500 procedures at the moment in the 11 years. 83 of them started in 2021, and do you remember what I told you about the current numbers of law suits in Brazil? So, NIC.br alone avoided some 500 new legal demands upon the judiciary system, and if we had more companies, and that brings us to a reflection, if we had more companies than businesses committing efforts to mitigate law suits by providing their users with administrative solutions like SACI‑Adm, we could certainly make a significant contribution to reach justice in the country. Other interested parties with other litigations could also be using the legal system to bridge their demands, so instead of putting other litigations related, for example, with domain names in the same basket for the judge to judge several other ‑‑ several of time at the same time, so ‑‑ we have an average of 46 new procedures per year, so that's a good number that we have. And just of those, 500, just 9 of them fall to Court, so that's 11.2% and 1 of those 9 reverted the expert decision. So, again, when a judge who has been judging a process about, let's say whatever, sees that he will decide about the domain names and that one of the interested parties already has an expert analysis, it has been much more likely that the Judge will follow that expert's decision, so that's one of the advantages of using SACI‑Adm from our side, from the client side, from the registrant side, this has been an advantage for the whole environment.
And here we have some comparisons about the timeframe of a law suit versus a SACI‑Adm process. One of them ‑‑ while one of them took more than 6 years to be finished, the other took just 90 days, so a clear indication of the way that SACI‑Adm works much closer to the dynamics of the Internet and demands of the Internet 6789.
So, here we have some radical cases, some use cases from SACI‑Adm. This one is from a supermarket chain. In is a claim of a domain flame with a title from a supermarket chain, and this one from a soccer team. The first one was requiring a domain name transfer. It was citing 2018, so there is a typo‑squatting on it and the request was upheld and the domain name was transferred to the claimant. While in the second one, there was ‑‑ it was proven that the domain name was registered in bad faith and this second case is interesting because the contents of the website were analyzed by the experts, who also thought that there were links, logos, and other contents that could lead to confusion and to think that the user was in one website when he wasn't. So, that puts us into the questions segment, so feel free to ‑‑ I don't know if we have some questions? Let me just open here.
>> MODERATOR: Hi, Everton, thank you for the presentation, it was so clear. Thank you so much. And hi, to Diego. I also have (?) from CIGR that stands for the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee, and Rosaro who is also here, and ‑‑ yeah, also CGI member and I don't know if you have any questions, if you want to say a few words were to complement the presentation. It was very, very clear. It's a lot of work. For the few weeks that I've been in this new role, I could see at least one‑third of a yearly rate and how it's well streamlined and working.
>> EVERTON RODRIGUES: Okay. Thank you.
>> Okay. Thank you, Everton. Congratulations for this. It's very, very important. It is an example for it. Thank you.
>> EVERTON RODRIGUES: Thank you. Well, that's all from my side. I can see that we don't have questions here in the chat, so perhaps not from YouTube as well. Yes?
>> MODERATOR: Yeah, no, that's okay. I was just going to say, Everton, if you want to say in the concluding remarks, for those that are going to watch perhaps later this video, how they can reach out and get more information. Because it's not only here today but I mean others will see later.
>> EVERTON RODRIGUES: Okay. So here, let me share my screen again. Where is the presentation? It is ‑‑ it is here. So here we have the SACI‑Adm info and decisions. They are all public ‑‑ publicly available. And they are at registro.br/dominio/saci‑adm/, and all the decisions that have been taken or already published there, and you can get in contact with us at NIC.br as well, so if you have any questions and further comments, so please feel free to reach out to us and make your comments. That's all. That's it from my side. If you have any comments or questions, they are welcome. It was a very brief presentation, but hope to see you soon, whether in person or virtually.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much.
>> EVERTON RODRIGUES: Thank you very much, everyone.