Entries tagged with “registerfly” from Domains / Internet Technology News - DNS News

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?

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 required

That'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?

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 required

That'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.

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.