ICANN Terminates Two More Registrars

In the last couple of days ICANN has terminated two more registrars for breaching their contracts – CI Host (PDF) and Power Brand Center (PDF).

CI Host seems to have vanished. Their listed website no longer works and the contact details that ICANN had for them are no longer valid – the offices are now occupied by another company!

Using archive.org I was able to grab a screenshot of what the site looked like a few months ago:

Their IANA ID is pretty low (404), which suggests one of two things. Either they were accredited for a long time, or they acquired an accreditation from someone else, though it’s impossible to see which is the case easily.

The company had problems in the past, with their server facilities being broken into several times and physical servers being stolen.

Here’s what ICANN’s Compliance team had to say about the reasons leading to the termination:

This termination is based on C I Host’s seeming insolvency. 

ICANN came to this conclusion based on the following:
1.  The contact details provided to ICANN by CI Host (telephone numbers, fax number and address) are no longer valid, in violation of  RAA Section 5.11 Notices, Designations, and Specifications;
2.  An article published by D Magazine states that another entity purchased the office space where C I Host allegedly operates. To see the article, go to:
http://realpoints.dmagazine.com/2012/03/corespace-moving-headquarters-to-dallas/;
3.  C I Host’s failure to provide an interactive webpage, in violation of RAA Section 3.3 Public Access to Data on Registered Names ( www.cihost.com does not resolve);
and
4.  C I Host’s failure to timely pay accreditation fees for several months, in violation of RAA Section 3.9 Accreditation Fees

While it’s not 100% clear how many domain names are currently associated with CI Host the figures from HosterStats would suggest that there’s under 7 thousand.

The other company that lost their accreditation this week was Power Brand Center Corp, who are listed as being based in Panama. In their case the termination is much simpler – they never paid their bills! According to the letter ICANN sent them this week they owe over 20 thousand dollars in fees!

Based on webhosting.info it looks like there’s about 35 thousand names associated with that registrar. The usual process for de-accreditation will be used, so Power Brand Center can choose a new registrar for the domains under their credentials, but if they don’t ICANN will step in and help move them.