ICANN’s compliance team has been busy of late.
Earlier today they followed through on 3 previous breach notices and terminated 3 registrars:
- Lime Labs LLC
- Central Registrar Inc DBA DomainMonger.com
- R. Lee Chambers Company LLC d/b/a DomainsToBeSeen.com
All three registrars appear to have failed to comply with their contractual obligations or to satisfy ICANN that they had fixed their issues. All three also appear to owe ICANN fees.
The terminated registrars can choose another registrar to takeover their domains, but if they don’t then ICANN will step in and get them moved to another registrar. After the RegisterFly disaster ICANN put in place a “transition” process which helps safeguard registrants. They’ll also lose the right to use the ICANN logo on their sites, though I suspect that that’s pretty low down on their priority list.
I suspect there will be more to follow, or am I being pessimistic?
Related articles
- ICANN Compiance Sends Breach Notices To 10 Registrars (internetnews.me)
- Vietnamese Registrar Gets Slapped By ICANN Compliance (internetnews.me)
- Cheapies.com Gets Another Breach Notice From ICANN (internetnews.me)
- ICANN Should Clarify Position On Key Word New TLDs (circleid.com)
If they step in, how does ICANN decide who will be the new registrar ?
Gianni
They have a process: http://www.icann.org/en/resources/registrars/drt/de-accredited-registrar-transition-procedure-01oct08-en.pdf
From the overview:
“In summary, the De-Accredited Registrar Transition Procedure is initiated with a request for registrars to submit expressions of interest if they wish to be considered as potential recipients of a bulk transfer. Registrars are typically given one week to submit their expressions of interest. Simultaneously, the de-accredited registrar is provided an opportunity to propose a receiving registrar. ICANN considers several factors in deciding whether to authorize a bulk transfer to the proposed registrar, and the transfer can only be approved if it would promote community interest.
If the de-accredited registrar fails to propose a receiving registrar or if ICANN determines that the proposed transfer would not promote community interest, ICANN will review all submitted expressions of interest and invite all qualified registrar-applicants to participate in a one-week negotiation period. In the negotiation period, the registrar-applicants must submit competitive proposals that will be scored on pre-determined, objective criteria. The qualified registrar with the highest score will be selected to receive the bulk transfer of names from your registrar.
Once the receiving registrar is selected, ICANN will provide it with registration data and notify the registries to effect the bulk transfer after the data has been integrated into the receiving registrar’s systems. The receiving registrar will then send notices to the affected registrants, with instructions on how to begin managing names with the receiving registrar.
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See: http://www.icann.org/en/resources/compliance/registrar/faqs