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I don't check the RegisterFly website that often, so I've no idea when they "rebranded"
The most obvious difference is subtle:
has become:
Not that big a difference admittedly, but still you'd have to ask what they're playing at.
Back when RegisterFly was still RegisterFly the emails they sent out were a lot less dodgy as they included tangible contact details in the email footer AND on the website.
Now, in the latter half of 2008, all you get is a link to the website and if there are proper contact details there I had issues locating them this morning.
But what drives them to do this minor rebrand?
If they wanted to shake off the old name then why not do it cleanly?
Ours is not to reason why I guess ....
The most obvious difference is subtle:
has become:Not that big a difference admittedly, but still you'd have to ask what they're playing at.Back when RegisterFly was still RegisterFly the emails they sent out were a lot less dodgy as they included tangible contact details in the email footer AND on the website.
Now, in the latter half of 2008, all you get is a link to the website and if there are proper contact details there I had issues locating them this morning.
But what drives them to do this minor rebrand?
If they wanted to shake off the old name then why not do it cleanly?
Ours is not to reason why I guess ....
If you have rules and regulations but don't enforce them then there's little point in having any rules or regulations in the first place.
One of the criticisms that is often levelled at ICANN is with regard to compliance issues. There are a number of areas where ICANN accredited registrars maybe flounting the rules, but if nobody does anything about it then none of the registrars will have any incentive to actually comply.
According to the latest ICANN news alert notices have been sent to both Joker.com and DNS.com.cn for WHOIS policy issues.
All ICANN accredited registrars are bound under their contract with ICANN (the RAA, which has been under review for over a year) and if ICANN deems it necessary they may actually lose their accreditation for non-compliance.
In the last 12 months there have been a number of registrars who have lost their accreditation, though none would have attracted the level of media attention of Registerfly. That a relatively large European registrar such as Joker would be subject to this kind of "wake up call" puts things in a whole new perspective.
What would be the impact on the European internet community if one of their own were to lose their ICANN accreditation?
One of the criticisms that is often levelled at ICANN is with regard to compliance issues. There are a number of areas where ICANN accredited registrars maybe flounting the rules, but if nobody does anything about it then none of the registrars will have any incentive to actually comply.
According to the latest ICANN news alert notices have been sent to both Joker.com and DNS.com.cn for WHOIS policy issues.
All ICANN accredited registrars are bound under their contract with ICANN (the RAA, which has been under review for over a year) and if ICANN deems it necessary they may actually lose their accreditation for non-compliance.
In the last 12 months there have been a number of registrars who have lost their accreditation, though none would have attracted the level of media attention of Registerfly. That a relatively large European registrar such as Joker would be subject to this kind of "wake up call" puts things in a whole new perspective.
What would be the impact on the European internet community if one of their own were to lose their ICANN accreditation?
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Remember those little darlings from RegisterFly? They upset a hell of a lot of people last year and are the cause of much nervousness chez ICANN as a result.
Well it seems they haven't gone out of business just yet and are even emailing their customers to sell them more of their "wonderful" services.
They've even added a "clarification" on their site to help those of us who might be confused by the whole affair.
Some of the statement is factual, but other parts made me giggle:
We did a bulk transfer of names that were under our accreditation to another registrar, hence we do not function as an ICANN accredited registrar. After the conclusion of the bulk transfer there was no need for us to remain an accredited registrar since the benefits did not merit the cost and effort requiredThat's incredibly misleading. Registerfly didn't choose to lose its accreditation. It lost it for a number of very public reasons. Have a quick search on the ICANN blog, for example
The key phrase is buried in the last sentence:
With new management in place, we are eager to earn your business.So, if I'm interpreting this correctly, RegisterFly changed their management around and are hoping to reinvent themselves. Surely being honest about what happened would be a good starting point?
I've mentioned some of the concerns that have been raised in the ICANN community over the past year.
One of the areas that was of particular concern in the aftermath of the RegisterFly meltdown was registrant data. In simple terms, if a registrar fails there could be a serious issue gaining access to the information linking registrants to their domain names. For some registries this isn't that much of an issue, as they are what is known as "thick registries" ie. the registrant details are also held directly by the registry. Unfortunately this isn't the case for .com, which is where the bulk of registrations lie.
In order to rectify this situation ICANN put in motion a data escrow program. Basically this would mean that registrars would have to place registrant information with a 3rd party. If the registrar has issues then the data associated with the domains should still be safe.
According to a recent announcement from ICANN the data escrow contract has been granted to Iron Mountain.
While the technical implementation of the data escrow may incur extra costs for registrars they are not being expected to pay the escrow fees - these will be covered by ICANN directly.
One of the areas that was of particular concern in the aftermath of the RegisterFly meltdown was registrant data. In simple terms, if a registrar fails there could be a serious issue gaining access to the information linking registrants to their domain names. For some registries this isn't that much of an issue, as they are what is known as "thick registries" ie. the registrant details are also held directly by the registry. Unfortunately this isn't the case for .com, which is where the bulk of registrations lie.
In order to rectify this situation ICANN put in motion a data escrow program. Basically this would mean that registrars would have to place registrant information with a 3rd party. If the registrar has issues then the data associated with the domains should still be safe.
According to a recent announcement from ICANN the data escrow contract has been granted to Iron Mountain.
Under the data escrow provision of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA), all ICANN-accredited registrars must regularly deposit a backup copy of their gTLD registration data with ICANN through ICANN's arrangement with Iron Mountain or they may elect to use a Third Party Provider of RDE services that has been approved by ICANN. The data held in escrow may be released to ICANN upon termination of a registrar's accreditation agreement or expiration of the accreditation agreement without renewal to facilitate transfer of registrations from the failed registrar to another registrar. ICANN plans to have all accredited registrars enrolled in the RDE program within the next six months.While this is probably a very positive move in terms of protecting registrants it does raise some interesting privacy issues as well. Does this sort of data transfer have implications for EU data privacy law?
While the technical implementation of the data escrow may incur extra costs for registrars they are not being expected to pay the escrow fees - these will be covered by ICANN directly.
Just when I thought I'd heard the end of Registerfly .....
It looks like a mailserver in RegisterFly was rebooted last night / this morning, as I'm being flooded with mails that I should have received towards the end of last year.
It's kind of amusing when I think of the headaches that they caused for the industry over the last few months and now they're filling up my inbox even though they're no longer really around to do it ....
Mail servers - ya gotta love 'em!
It was inevitable that ICANN would want to review the Registrar Accreditation Agreement following on the collapse of RegisterFly.
At both the Lisbon and San Juan ICANN meetings the registrar agreement was a hot topic.
So what is going on exactly?
Paul Twomey's announcement yesterday covers most of the salient points:
The need for this review is clear. The current RAA is more than six years old. We’ve seen the number of accredited registrars grow to more than 900. And we’ve seen the incredible difficulties that can be unleashed with the collapse of a Registrar.The Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) deals with the relationship between ICANN and the registrars. Some of the topics that are up for discussion / review are obviously motivated by RegisterFly's "backdoor" accreditation and the subsequent fallout when it collapsed:
* Incorporating provisions to govern the terms under which a registrar can be sold and continue to retain its ICANN accreditation. * Including additional contract enforcement tools offering more options than the current one option – terminating accreditation. * Addressing the responsibilities of a parent owner/manager when one or more of a “family” of registrars fails to comply with ICANN requirements. * Requiring registrars to escrow contact information for customers who register domain names using Whois privacy and Whois proxy services. * Augmenting the responsibilities placed on registrars with regard to their relationships with resellers. * Requiring operator skills training and testing for all ICANN-accredited Registrars.A couple of these points may not need further explanation, but others definitely warrant it. The concept of contact information escrow is very important to registrants, as the collapse of RegisterFly led to many registrants (domain owners) being in the awkward position of not being able to prove ownership of their domains. I'm not sure which areas of the reseller - registrar relationship ICANN is interested in, but if you consider how much the market has changed in the last 6 years it's pretty obvious that some mention of resellers is necessary. More information on the consultation is available on the ICANN site
In the aftermath of the RegisterFly fiasco there has been a lot of discussion of how best to protect registrants should a registrar fail. When the .travel registry had financial issues the issue of registry failure made it onto the agenda.
The ICANN meeting in San Juan this week is not without discussions of these and other topics, which were topics in a workshop held there earlier today.
The Registerfly website has been updated to reflect their loss of ICANN accreditation. You can now see the following on the main page:
NOTICE TO CONSUMERS. THE INTERNET CORPORATION FOR ASSIGNED NAMES AND NUMBERS - THE NON FOR PROFIT ENTITY THAT ADMINISTERS THE INTERNET'S DOMAIN NAME SYSTEM, HAS ISSUED A NOTICE OF TERMINATION OF THIS COMPANY'S ACCREDITATION TO SERVE AS AN INTERNET DOMAIN NAME REGISTRAR. PLEASE SEE WWW.ICANN.ORG FOR FURTHER INFORMATION.About time too!
So far this year has been a very busy year for ICANN.
The aftermath of the RegisterFly meltdown is having a very tangible knockon effect, while .travel's "close call" has also opened up a whole range of questions that might not have been asked otherwise.
So what would happen if a registry (not a registrar) were to fail?
That's one of the questions that is currently being asked and will be a topic for discussion at the next ICANN meeting in San Juan later this month.
At the registrar level the pressing question in the light of RegisterFly has been data escrow which is aimed at avoiding future issues with registrant data:
Through the RDE program, ICANN seeks to ensure protection of registrants in the event of registrar failure or other termination of a registrar's accreditation agreement. Through this RFP ICANN seeks to engage an agent to provide RDE services for those registrars who elect not to escrow data with an independent third-party escrow agentOf course there is one serious issue with any of these plans - it cannot account for the data input by the end user. Previous studies of whois data revealed a high level of inaccuracy, which this kind of "solution" would not fix. Whois, however, is also a very hot topic for debate at present, as there are very different opinions on what it should and shouldn't reveal.
As the year progresses the number of mergers and acquistions in the domain industry is increasing at an impressive rate.
Hot on the heels of GoDaddy's acquisition (saving?) of RegisterFly another media company acquires a domain company.
Is anyone beginning to see a pattern emerging?
Oversee.net has acquired SnapNames according to a post on Jay Westerdal's blog.
SnapNames describes itself as:
the first commercially available technology for "back-ordering" a currently registered domain name. This pioneering service helped customers gain access to domain names that were thought to be forever out of reach. In reality, most domain names cycle back into the market at some point in time, though without specialized help, most people are unable to find or buy them.It's an interesting acquisition for Oversee.net which already owns DomainSponsor as well as a very interesting portfolio of domains. Are they going to start competing in the aftermarket or is this going to be run as a completely separate entity from the "mother ship"? Most acquisitions do not have an immediate effect, so it will probably be a couple of months before we notice any changes (if there are to be any).
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