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ICANN to RegisterFly: We Really REALLY Mean It This Time

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ICANN’s web site has a press release saying that the were granted a temporary restraining order on Monday requiring that Registerfly cough up all the info on their registrants, or else.

My assumption all along has been that the reason that Registerfly hasn’t provided full info is because they don’t have it. ICANN agrees that they got partial data last month, and it’s hard to imagine a reason that Registerfly would have given them some of the data but deliberately held back the rest. I guess we’ll know soon enough.

By the way, I hear that ICANN plans to implement their registrar escrow policy, the one that’s been in the contracts since 2000, pretty soon.

By John Levine, Author, Consultant & Speaker

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Comments

John Berryhill  –  Apr 22, 2007 10:28 PM

it’s hard to imagine a reason that Registerfly would have given them some of the data but deliberately held back the rest.

Some reasons arise from the sorts of games that Registerfly was playing.  Here are two examples from among the dozens that I have floating around my office.

Registrant A bought several .info domain names from a Registerfly customer.  Registrant A attempted repeatedly to obtain the authorization codes for moving those domains to another registrar, and was unable to do so.  After Registrant A contacted Registerfly, they slammed all of the domain names into a peronal registration account owned by Kevin Medina.  After some other interesting twists and turns, they coughed up the auth codes.  Then, when those 20 or so names were moved and Registrant A closed the account, Registerfly changed the whois on about 200 or so .info domains, including domains incorporating famous trademarks, to that of Registrant A.  Despite repeated contact with Registerfly, ICANN, and Afilias, Registrant A continues to receive complaints relating to domains for which Medina, Naruscewicz, and Stansbury continue to maintain fraudulent WHOIS data for no purpose other than what appears to be raw spite.

Registrant B had registered a first batch of about 700 domain names with Registerfly.  Several months later, Registrant B registered another batch of about 500 domains with Registerfly.  Registerfly set the nameserver data for the second batch of domain names, and refused to allow Registrant B to change the nameserver data.  After repeated attempts to rectify the problem with Registerfly “support”, Registrant B then contacted his credit card company to charge back the registration fees for the second batch of domain names.  Registerfly responded by removing all of the domain names from Registrant B’s account, and setting the WHOIS data for even the first batch of names to “Fraud Department” or some similar designation.  Registerfly continues to ignore all contact from Registrant B.

Registerfly has played so many games with the WHOIS data, that the value of the court order here is questionable.  However, since it is unlikely that Registerfly will be able to produce a body of data which makes sense, then it may be a good setup for contempt orders against the principals of Registerfly.  Perhaps the three of them can get a cell together and work out their relationship problems.

lisa Smith  –  Apr 26, 2007 5:33 AM

One issue i find is Registerfly being rude as heck. This makes the job so hard. They dont care. They think they can thumb nose at all authority. We should not be having to pay transfer fees out or even have them to approve the transfer. the problem is two fold. This is as bad as stormpay telling people to pay x amount by money order or they will not unlock the account. That is wrong and sick.

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