ICANN Warns 4 Registrars, Gives 15 Days Notice
Sunday, April 18th, 2010
ICANN puts four domain name registrars on notice for breaches.
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has warned four domain name registrars that they are in breach of the terms of their accreditation agreement, and has given them 15 working days to cure the breaches.
Three of the registrars are in breach of the agreement for failure to escrow domain name whois information as required by section 3.6 of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement. Western United Domains, Inc., Mobiline USA d.b.a. DomainBonus.com, and DropNation.com were all given 15 working days to begin escrowing data or face termination.
Registrar Alantron BLTD was cited for failing to provide public access to whois information on its domain names. ICANN has notified Alantron twice within the past 30 days of the unavailability of its whois database.
Of the four registrars, only Alantron appears to have more than 1,000 domain names registered. According to RegistrarStats.com, Alantron has just over 30,000 gTLD domains registered.
Further Reading:
Andrew, Would you explain what “escrow WhosIs information” means? Thanx.
The data escrow requirement is spelled out here:
http://www.icann.org/en/nsi/icann-raa-04nov99.htm#II-I
What has happened is that a few years ago, it was advantageous for a single entity to control multiple registrars for dropcatching. With the development of “transfer fulfillment” systems like SnapNames and NameJet, the incidence of registry deletion of valuable names dramatically decreased.
As a consequence, a lot of “spare” registrars were left over with no particular use. At the same time, some domain registrants were dissatisfied with the lopsided contracts offered by retail registrars. This created a ready market to sell the excess registrar entities.
So, what you have are a certain number of registrars operating without detailed familiarity of the ICANN operating requirements for registrars. The harm potential is low, so long as they aren’t offering retail registration services for others. Typically, they need a quick primer and to sign up with Iron Mountain, which is contracted by ICANN to collect and escrow registrar data (under a contract that is not published by ICANN, oddly enough).
ICANN is no one to be pointing fingers. That has to be the slimiest operation going next to DirectNIC.com Please.
I was away in India when my .com name expired and someone bought it and tried to sell it to me for a lot of money
the name afinitec is a brand name registered do I have any recourse against this person