International Trade Law News

Registration commenced at 1 p.m. today for the Bureau of Industry and Security's (BIS) Annual Update Conference on Export Controls and Policy. Demand for this program has increased to such an extent that getting a ticket for Update is much harder than getting tickets to a Washington Redskins playoff game (plus, unlike most sporting events, BIS does not permit scalping).

However, the third-party registration site that BIS is using to conduct registration for Update was overwhelmed by the number of users trying to register at the same time.

Shortly after 1 p.m. the following message started appearing on the registration site, even though the registration site is supposed to be open and BIS had sent e-mail messages to their LISTSERV advising that the site was open: "Online registration has not yet started for this event. Please come back later to register."

Shortly before 2 p.m. the following notice appeared: "Online registration is currently unavailable for this event. Please check back soon."

Shortly after 3 p.m., BIS announced on its website:

The Update registration software server is temporarily down.
No one is able to register at this time. Once the server is back
up, we will send another email message. We cannot accommodate phone
and fax registrations.

Thank you for your patience.

By 5 p.m. BIS realized that the technical problems were more serious than they thought when the agency announced:

Registration for Update has been postponed due to technical problems. We cannot
accept email, fax or phone registration requests. We do not have an estimate at
this time of when registration will resume. We will ensure that there is adequate
notice given on the BIS website and by email notification when registration is set
to resume.

Thank you for your patience.

Labels: BIS, Export Controls