Who wants 1,440 domains? Good question.
When RegisterFly lost its ICANN accreditation, GoDaddy swooped in to take over the registration of RegisterFly clients’ domain names. It was a nice pickup for GoDaddy of nearly 1 million domain names.
So what happens when a small registrar with only 1,440 domain names under management loses its accreditation? That’s a good question, especially since a registrar has to endure a lot of trouble to get the domains.
ICANN is seeking “Expressions of Interest” from registrars to pick up the domain names managed by #1 Domain Names International, Inc. dba 1dni.com. To qualify, a registrar must complete a detailed request to ICANN including:
– Registrar experience, including number of registrations and customers managed;
– Availability of sufficient customer service staffing to timely respond to customer service requests during and shortly after the bulk transfer;
– Ability to communicate with customers in languages other than English;
– A list of the gTLDs in which accredited and operational;
– Experience with and knowledge of bulk-transfer procedures;
– Documentation of procedures to resolve potential disputes of domain name control or registration rights (in the event of contested ownership or inaccurate whois data);
– Experience as a customer-facing / “retail” registrar business;
– Experience with second-level IDNs in the com zone;
– Ability to provide ICANN with regular status reports.
That seems like a lot of work for 1,440 domains. We’ll see if ICANN’s new process for transferring domains from de-accredited registrars holds up when there’s little demand for the domains.
For its part, #1 Domain Names International’s web site still says it is an ICANN accredited registrar.
“We are small enough to be personal yet large enough to be a stable ICANN accredited registrar since 1999,” the company’s web site claims.
A search on DNForum shows a handful of complaints about the registrar, including difficulty transferring domain names out and receiving a domain renewal notice from the registrar when a domain was at a competing domain registrar.
ICANN has yet to effectively deal with large domain tasters and registrars not releasing expired domains. TUCOWS has been a serial abuser of this practice, and lately, ENOM has been hoarding any domain with a remote semblance of value.
Hi I saw this referenced at http://www.SubliminalMessages.Com and wanted to say that ICANN needs to get aggressive on this important issue. Instead of having regisrars submit RFPs (1400 ha!), each ICANN registrar should need to have a registration “buddy”: another ICANN Firm willing to step in and accept full and immediate responsibility. Should the main registrar go down, the buddy takes over the domains to make sure no domains lapse.
“A list of the gTLDs in which accredited and operational”
Wait till next year and all these new extensions start coming out. I’d imagine that not every registrar will support all of these new extensions. I wonder what will happen when a registrar goes down then? They would have to part-out the domains.
JP – It’s already the case that not all registrars support all extensions. I think there are only a couple hundred on .mobi, for example. But I see you point — some domains will only have a few supporting registrars, such what happens when one of the registrars fails?
Is there a list anywhere of what the 1440 domains are ??
~DomainBELL (Patricia)
I find it frustrating that ICANN seem to make you want to jump through hoops to do anything, yet don’t do much jumping themselves as Frank mentions TUCOWS are a serial abuser.
Well, I am one of them and I’ve been swinging in the breeze for months.
Sure would be nice to have a “buddy” right about now.
FWIW, I did get an unsolicited email to sign up with TUCOWS, and couldn’t figure out why….til now.
Rj, do you know anything about why they lost their accreditation?
Is there a list of the registrars that lost accreditation ??
Is there a way to get the list of domains each of those had – that will now be brought to market by ICANN ??
Has anyone received any letters from their registrats that accreditation has been terminated ??
~DomainBELL (Patricia)
I wonder if being a Godaddy reseller would qualify one for such domains. Having a couple thousand domains would easily pay for the fees.
I just got an email from tucows / hover.com that they now have my domain(s). After the first year, they want $15/yr to renew. Pff. Transferring to godaddy, where all my new registrations are.