Sounds like more domains are going to disappear. ICANN what happen to the transfer deal???

Contact Ed Markey chair of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. Email contact page is here:

http://markey.house.gov/index.php?option=com_email_form&Itemid=124

I’ve requested that Markey schedule hearings on the REGISTERFLY/ICANN situation. If enough people request the hearings it will be a start to getting this mess finally resolved and some meaningful web reform initiated.

Normally I would agree with this sentiment. For all intent and purposes we have a technically illiterate congress, who bows to special interests anyway.

But one has to wonder what kind of oversight is needed, as ICANN seems unable to provide any here. I’m thinking the commerce dept. needs to review ICANN’s contract.

It’s unfortunate that the FBI doesn’t care about credit card fraud anymore, because then law enforcement could get involved, which should have happenned long ago.

The question I have is, did he acknowledge the court order with one grunt or two grunts???

Eric,

CaptainProton’s comment is right on focus:

“But one has to wonder what kind of oversight is needed, as ICANN seems unable to provide any here. I’m thinking the commerce dept. needs to review ICANN’s contract.”

ICANN seems powerless, the Dept of Commerce put ICANN in place and REP. Markey’s committee is the first step in that oversight. I didn’t state we needed more regulation, I’m just saying lets fix whats happening and whats in place right now.

If it’s possible to post a PDF of the new injunctions in the ICANN-Registerfly document archive I’m sure we’d all enjoy reading them

They havent worked all the details or whatever out with the new registar, that should be done by this week coming (the wk of Memorial Day for those in the USA, maybe by the 31 May or 1 Jun)

After dealing with this whole ahh mess for over 3 mths now I think we should give them another week to get all info moved over & the new registar announced before trying for new domain names bud.

I was frustrated, RF caused me to lose 4 biz domain names but I was able to get them back, just the cost of registaring them at GoDaddy. Considering the “stealer” wanted me to pay him over $500 USD to just get 1 freed up I was lucky, very lucky it only cost me like $7 USD in the end.

I’ve been slowly transferring others out of RF, had 1 that was locked for some strange reason & couldnt unlock but RF’s Tech Support very fast freed it up for me, so it seems some people at RF still care & are probably very PO’ed they got screwed too, after all they will probably lose their jobs when RF goes byebye after all this.

Course the ones I’ve moved out were due for renews anyway & I have a bunch more due in June, so either way no matter what registar they go to I have to pay for them anyways. As long as it aint over & or so USD’s I’m about as content as can be in this whole mess. And I’m letting a mess expire anyways as they were really just redirects.

I was lucky, many others havent been so far, I wish all good luck in this mess & thanks to ICANN for doing what they could with thier hands tied around their ahh waists.

Diane

What bothers me more and more is the fact that our Government seems not to be following the laws in applying them…Is it becasue most of these domain holders only have the number of domains which represent misdeamor crimes?

I just registered and paid for a domain via RF.

Wish I had read this first!

So now what?

/Martin, Sweden.

What bothers me more and more is the fact that our Government seems not to be following the laws in applying them

Why don’t you ask the relevant government agencies (and nope, ICANN isn’t one of them)? It’s possible they’re doing something but are waiting for something to happen before making any announcements.

Someone has filed a complaint with the Florida Attorney General:

http://myfloridalegal.com/lit_ec.nsf/investigations/32178B07A2F599B9852572C7006DBB51

We should all be following up with more complaints on this file number. Hopefully we can move the Attorney General to take action against REGISTERFLY and shut it down.

Check via independent whois such as http://www.who.is that it is registered, and go and use an ICANN fully accredited registrar – a one displaying the ICANN logo.

This is a ‘civil’ investigation, not a ‘criminal investigation’ so what is the point? Many RF former customers are resigned to the fact that ‘civil’ proceedings aren’t working and want ‘criminal investigations’ as we’re convinced that the there is evidence to be obtained of millions of ‘criminal’ offences, not least fraud or theft.

Get facts right – ICANN doesn’t ‘manage’ the .net and .com registeries!

Thankyou for your dog-eared wisdom Sammy.

Kieren

My understanding is that any of the Attorney Generals in any of the states can file civil or criminal charges as warranted by each individual case.

Your point is well taken and I will ask this question of the Florida Attorney General on Tuesday.

As of 5am EST today the registerfly.com Verisign-GRS account is $(-142,470.95). This goes to show that ICANN only cares about itself and didn’t want to deal with moving things along faster when it was 100% possible given there are so many loopholes in the RAA.

Registerfly.com/Kevin Medina have stolen $171,360.95 from an American Express card in my name and he refuses to deal with this issue. Now I’m being sued for the charges. I wonder what Bob Parsons will think when I charge back thousands of .info’s and and his companies investment evaporates just a little more because Afilias will cut off the names (this seems to be my only option but I don’t know if I could bring myself to do it).

Does anyone care? Nope!

I feel like one of just a few people in this world that doesn’t think selfishly when it comes to domain names. This business is my love. I don’t care if I make money out of it; I just truly enjoy the business.

People need their domain names back. Of course no one cares how they get them back and won’t even think of all of the things that went on behind the scenes for them to keep their domain names but it will happen. Of course, It should have never got to this point in the first place but there are many people fighting for even the single domain name holder. Be patient!

Parsons is buying the assets, no liability, and I’ll see not a single dime of that money. I have lists of tens of thousands of customers that sent funds to Medina (I also have proof that the cash went into his personal bank account); but who cares. They probably won’t get any of their money back either.

Will anyone, any agency, do anything about these problems? Nope!

Hate me for trying.

(PS. Sorry for the rant but I’m so fed up with this whole situation. It’s just downright wrong what everyone is being forced to go though.)

very good post JN. ICANN has been namemed in a class action suit by their own admission of knowledge of compaints about registerfly dating back for a year or so. entities dont get named in a suit for no legal reason. Domain control needs to be taken away from ICANN and verisign as well. $6 is a realistic price for domains tro prevent abuse. forget the free tasting, add a small fee to “restock” after 5 days or so. maybe .50c. that would free up the tasting burden, which is about 90% of all domain registrations/deletions. It would seem that each member of ICANN might personally own one of these tasting registrars.

Actually RF’s webhost is neeeded, because RF has to post a notice to customers in 14 pt type on the top third of each of it’s webpages by tomorrow if I am understanding the court order correctly.

You’re wrong in 1 respect.
What he’s doing is defrauding people everyday and
there’s a federal law called the Rico Act.
That’s when someone runs an ongoing criminal enterprise which he’s been doing for along time!

I noticed when I go to my expired domain (expired during this mess) it now says page can’t be displayed, which is a heck of alot better than having registerfly use it as a parking lot for links for their benefit. Please hurry up and get our domains back!
You would think after this mess, someone could give ICANN more power so this does not happen again. What is the guarantee this won’t happen again or some other scenario we have not thought of? Somehow we need to have control over our domains so we never have to go through this nightmare again.
I know a lot of people have lost money, but what about the time spent trying to keep up with the latest news, time spent emailing ICANN only to told they would forward it to registerfly, all the time on the phone, all the time spent filling out support tickets, all the time emailing anybody who would help? All the stress this has caused me to have? I have been obsessed with this since April 2nd. when one of my domains expired. That’s how I found out about this mess.

This is very unfortunate for you. You did not Register a domain name, you just gave RegisterFly more unearned money. RegisterFly will send you an email saying that the domain has been registered but it isn’t. If you check the whois.sc website, that domain is still available for anyone to register.

I have hundreds of dollars in my account that I can’t use and I suspect that I will have to declare the nonuse of this money as another business liability.

I’m not sure what this stuff really means.

Already answered above:

If they don’t fully comply with the Preliminary Injunction by June 1, 2007, RegisterFly (or Kevin Medina personally) is required to pay $5,000.00 per day until they do. As the Court previously ordered, Kevin Medina did personally appear in Court today, as the Court had ordered. He acknowledged that he understood the Court’s order.

We can only hope that he does.

It’s simply an update on ICANN’s civil dispute with Mr. Medina. This exact update has no bearing on the domain names just yet, but will likely be addressed by them in a future blog entry

As of 1000 PDT, May 27, 2007, the RegisterFly site 1) has no visible notices that they are no longer an ICANN registrar, and 2) is still accepting domain orders.

I contacted abuse @ sagonet.com and they replied that registerfly.com does not in fact point to them, but to theplanet.com, which I confirmed for myself.

whois 70.84.105.190 (registerfly.com IP)

OrgName: ThePlanet.com Internet Services, Inc.
OrgID: TPCM
Address: 1333 North Stemmons Freeway
Address: Suite 110
City: Dallas
StateProv: TX
PostalCode: 75207
Country: US

ReferralServer: rwhois://rwhois.theplanet.com:4321

OrgAbuseHandle: ABUSE271-ARIN
OrgAbuseName: Abuse
OrgAbusePhone: +1-214-782-7802
OrgAbuseEmail: abuse@theplanet.com

I’m not sure if it does any good to complain to theplanet, but I’m going to try anyway.

Diana

What you think isn’t the issue. They are not the same. ICANN doesn’t control RF. It is annoying to read rambling about things people know nothing about, posting statements like ‘they are the same’ isn’t helpful to those new to the problems with RF.

People have been losing money since last year, so you’re not alone!

Some people have lost businesses, jobs, houses etc where they relied upon RF to renew web-based business domain names and they didn’t.

THINGS ARE GOING WELL, maybe not as fast as we would all like, but the Courts (all courts) take time to come to a conclusion and to have their wishes carried out, but they will be carried out.

To John Nagle – KM and Rfly have until 1st June, so expect to see nothing until 31st May, midnight EDT (I believe that’s the timezone KM is in) before anything MAY happen. Don’t hold your breath, or you’ll probably turn blue.

For clarification Kieren, can you tell us what functions the UDRP performs and who runs it?
Also can you explain to us why us registrants that have registered domains IN GOOD FAITH (in your legal language) are not covered by this body? We have registered our names with registrars as per ICANN’s guidlines, and why have 75,000 domains + been expired, re registered, stolen, etc without UDRP recourse? We registrants have paid into Your ICANN for protection. I am sure that 99.9% of original registrants can prove that we paid for our domains.
Am I wrong to say that as per ICANN regs, Registrars are required to re register all domains that have expired, even if for non payment, for 45 days until names get purged? at no cost to the registrar?
It would seem that all of these names could have been rescued.

Well, I have completely lost my business and income due to this. But, I now have a great idea for some quick income…..

It seem like one can setup this kind of scam and get away with a lot of other peoples hard earned money. I had better hurry before someone puts a stop to it. Well, maybe I don’t need to hurry to much!
Thanks, Kevin Medina!

I never thought US court was this easy on fraud, not to say slooooow acting.

I’ve heard about many stupid lawsuits from the US, “coffee is hot” and what not. But when this real swindler are allowed to still continue his swindle, it’s just.. just.. can’t find words! That this Medina character still walks free is mockery up on the judicial system.

And what is ICANN? What is the use if it stands without power?

/Martin, Sweden.

This is a joke.

Someone is making a lot of money out of this – apart from Kevin Medina lets count them ahem .22c per domain and according to registerfly 2 million domains = $440000 when we have to renew.

Ok I will be more realistic 100 000 domains equates to $22 000.

I see someone is gonna get a new BMW or Mercedes soon.

I will sit with my crappy 4 domains and pay my share.

In the U.S. we historically have done a poor job of prosecuting white collar crime
Still though if you have not done so it is important that you contact the Florida attorney general. You can find the contact info on the Registerflies.com site

Remember; ICANN HAS to work within the frameworks of contracts and processes / procedures. ICANN is ONLY the overall coordinator of processes.

We actually need to see action from whatever Registrar IS taking over the name(s) from RegisterFly. That of course requires that Registrar to have all processes, procedures and Staff in place to hancle the influx of business.

mmmmm…..

Am I the only person now having trouble getting on to the Registerfly.com website ??

Have they now gone ??

Interesting

Paul

I’m sure what you mean here Lasard.

Are you saying that someone will make money when domains are renewed? Well of course they will. What would be different if this RegisterFly situation had never happened? A domain expires, it gets renewed.

And it won’t be just one company or just person that registers all these domains. And *even if* just one person in just one company registered all domains, the money is simply fed into the company, not given to an individual. It’s normal business operation.

The 22 cents that you refer to that is paid to ICANN, when multiplied by the 80 million domains out there, makes up a part of the overall ICANN budget. It would be the same with or without the RegisterFly problem. In fact, the situation would only be different if all domains held by RegisterFly were not going to be renewed anyway – which would have meant that none of this was a problem in the first place.

Where you summon up the concept of someone somewhere getting a Mercedes is completely beyond me.

Kieren

Hi Junaid

Unfortunately, you will need to contact Nominet for .uk domains.

Regards,
Dean Clinton

I don’t know why this is unfortunate – I would say it was extremely fortunate. Nominet runs a different system to the gTLD registries in that it considers the registrants has full rights over a domain.

So if you contact Nominet you should be able to regain full access to your domain over the phone.

Kieren

Rich,

The UDRP process is a very particular one that allows for domain ownership to be disputed when a complaining party holds a trademark in that name.

It was created because of the cybersquatting fears and the extreme concern of business that the DNS allowed for the registration of company names without apparent recourse.

The UDRP does not cover mere registration of a domain however i.e. unless you actually hold a trademark on a particular name, your application will not be considered.

Now if you believe there needs to be a new system which would account for a registrant’s rights, without the need for a trademark, then you should suggest it to the relevant part of the ICANN system – in your case, most likely ALAC.

Such a system would have a very large and wide impact on the Internet’s systems and as such it would have to be carefully considered before any effort was made to introduce it.

Kieren McCarthy
General manager of public participation, ICANN

Hi Nick,

If your argument is that this situation should have been foreseen and hence changes made in order to pre-empt it, that is one thing.

But you seem to believe that ICANN itself gets to decide issues, draw up solutions and then approve them. It just doesn’t work like that. ICANN acts as the co-ordinator between all the widely different parts of the Net community.

As such, changes are developed in one of ICANN’s supporting organisations, comments are received by other supporting organisations and advisory committees, it is put out to wider public review and then – and only then – does the Board (which itself is made up of people from right across the Net spectrum) make a decision.

The Internet does not have an all-powerful overseeing body. And part of the reason the Internet is such an extraordinary force is thanks to that fact.

If you are concerned that the way that ICANN is structured at the moment means that there is a potential bias in favour of one group or another, then the solution is to get involved, outline practical changes, and make the shift happen.

Join the ALAC. Or join the NCUC part of the GNSO. Or join both. And then put in the time to make the changes you think are needed. You will find that in my role, I will go out of my way to make your views known.

Kieren

It’s been posted on website under Customer Service…go figure.

Customer Service Center
NOTICE TO CONSUMERS.
THE INTERNET CORPORATION FOR ASSIGNED NAMES AND NUMBERS – THE NON FOR PROFIT ENTITY THAT ADMINISTERS THE INTERNET’S DOMAIN NAME SYSTEM, HAS ISSUED A NOTICE OF TERMINATION OF THIS COMPANY’S ACCREDITATION TO SERVE AS AN INTERNET DOMAIN NAME REGISTRAR.
PLEASE SEE http://WWW.ICANN.ORG FOR FURTHER INFORMATION.

Have to look for it…not on front page of their site.

Thought I’d share my experience with others…

Just got off the phone with GoDaddy. They said for RegisterFly domain owners to expect an email from GoDaddy with credentials to manage their domains from GoDaddy’s site. As of yet I have not received this email from them. The customer service agent said to give it a couple of days, as they cannot take any action until the email is received.

I’m not sure what happens if you never receive an email from them…?

They did mention that expired domains or domains in redemtion status would more than likely not be charged a reactivation fee, as this was caused by the RF fiasco.

So I guess we’re still waiting, but the end is in sight!

Paul, Kieren (or whoever from ICANN is reading this), just a suggestion that perhaps you can close the previous Registerfly update threads so people can post at the most recent one instead.

I see that I am a hard one to dance with.
We need a no spin zone guest appearance. I see Keiren dont want to dance.
Right is right and wrong is wrong. Give it up ICANN.

Rich,

You appear to be living in a dodgy 80s movie of your own making.

Maybe Footloose or Dirty Dancing. “Nobody puts baby in the corner.” Unfortunately ICANN is forced to live at the more immediate edge of things, so we won’t be able to get up to any dancing on this one.

Kieren

Now that our domain names have moved from Registerfly to Godaddy it has come to our attention that Godaddy is imposing a 60 day prohibition on transferring them out to other registrars. All requests for such transfers are automatically rejected by Godaddy and will continue to be so for 60 days.

This seems improper since the automatic transfer from Registerfly to Godaddy does not constitute a customary transfer (payment to Godaddy, acceptance of their TOS, extension of expiration date, an explicit and willful action by the registrant to use Godaddy, etc.) and the 60 day hold should not apply.

While the registry requirement for transferring out are met (lock status can be removed and the AuthCode obtained from Godaddy) Godaddy is unilaterally and automatically rejecting all transfer out requests. I maintain Godaddy does not have such authority – whether based on its agreements with ICANN (which has yet to be posted at ICANN’s website) or based on a user agreement (which has never been established with the registrant due to the ICANN sanctioned automatic transfers).

On its website Godaddy states: “ICANN named GoDaddy.com the new custodian of the .COM, .NET, .ORG, .INFO, .BIZ, and .NAME domain names that were previously registered at RegisterFly. ”

If Godaddy is the “custodian” of these transferred domain names it should not have the authority to place constraints on the domain names over and above that which existed while the domain names were at Registerfly. This includes the inability to place an additional 60 day prohibition on transferring out and imposing mandatory renewals on expiring domain names.

If Godaddy is allowed to forcefully place this 60 day hold not only will already expired registrations have to be renewed at Godaddy and no other registrar of registrant’s choice but also those registrations that will be expiring in the next 60 days will have to be renewed at Godaddy!

In effect Godaddy will not be the “custodian” of these domain names but rather the sole new registrar imposed for an additional year (under its own terms and conditions and its own fee structure) without any alternative for the current registrant.

One would hope ICANN’s agreement with Godaddy was not supposed to impose such a huge windfall for Godaddy by forcing a long term relationship by the Registerfly registrants with Godaddy.

According to Godaddy’s website “more than 850,000 domain names will have been moved.” Assuming 2/12 of these already expired during the past two months at Registerfly due to the acknowledged problems and 2/12 will expire in the next two months a total of 1/3 of the automatically transferred domain names (280,000) will be forced to be renewed at Godaddy for an additional year – without any such consent currently existing by the registrant. This constitutes a windfall of over $2,500,000 in sales for Godaddy simply for entering into the agreement with ICANN, and a sizable profit based on its $9.17 price. Adding insult to injury Godaddy will charge these domain names at its renewal fee of $9.17 instead of its transfer fee of $7.17.

If Godaddy is allowed to enforce this 60 day hold policy this arrangement would not by definition constitute a “custodial” and interim relationship with Godaddy but rather a forceful acceptance of a third party registrar with its own TOS (which we never agreed to) and an ICANN sanctioned unilateral and coerced acceptance of Godaddy as our registrar for one more year.

Registerfly registrants should be able to choose where to renew their registrations (past their TOS with Registerfly) and not be forced to renew with Godaddy and accept Godaddy’s TOS if they do not so desire.

The ICANN agreement with Godaddy may allow it to inherit the arrangement between the registrant and Registerfly but not to impose a new relationship with Godaddy in the future without the registrant’s consent.

RE: 60 day hold by Godaddy pursuant to the automatic (forced) transfer from Registrarfly

Hundreds of thousands of domain names transferred from Registerfly are currently hijacked by Godaddy and forced to be renewed under their terms and conditions in violation of ICANN rules and policies.

This is not a routine matter relating to a registrant requested and approved transfer from Registerfly to Godaddy which would be subject to ICANN’s Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy’s Holder-Authorized Transfers. Naturally the 60 day hold would apply to those instances.

However in the current case the registrants have not requested nor agreed to this automatic transfer, an agreement with Godaddy has not been established and Godaddy is merely acting as a “custodian” of the domain name as stated on its own site. Clearly ICANN’s Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy’s “Holder-Authorized Transfers” 60 day hold does not apply to the automatic transfers which are not Holder authorized.

A cursory review of policy clearly establishes that automatic transfers falls under Paragraph B. ICANN-Approved Transfers (which makes no mention of a 60 day hold) and not Paragraph A. Holder-Authorized Transfers (which provides of a 60 day hold after a registrant authorized transfer).

Paragraph A-3 further provides an example for exclusion of the 60 day hold where the transfer occurs pursuant to an agreement between the Registrars and/or a dispute resolution process. Such is the case here where the automatic transfer has occurred due to registrar/registry/ICANN agreements and without the specific agreement of the registrant.

See http://icann.org/transfers/policy-12jul04.htm

This matter currently effects some 100,000 expired domain names and over 200,000 more expiring in the coming months which have been wrongly subjected to a 60 day hold and effectively hijacked by Godaddy.

ICANN’s public statement regarding this matter could immediately resolve this matter.

Below is a quote from the link on the icann site:

“If the transfer involves registrations of more than 50,000 names, Registry Operator will charge the gaining Registrar a one-time flat fee of US$ 50,000″