Registerfly's Accreditation Terminated by ICANN 111
Punker22 writes "Effective immediately ICANN has terminated RegisterFly.com's accreditation. Between now and 31 March RegisterFly is required to unlock and provide all necessary Authinfo codes to allow domain name transfers to occur. Any and all registrants wishing to transfer away from RegisterFly during this period should be allowed to do so efficiently and expeditiously. 'Terminating accreditation is the strongest measure ICANN is able to take against RegisterFly under its powers,' Dr. Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN said today."
Tucows (Score:4, Informative)
I have a domain at with of their resellers which can not be contacted. (In fact their site certificate expired last October.) Unfortunately, Tucows offers absolutely no recourse, and the phone number listed in the whois will let you sit on hold forever, and eventually (after an hour or so) spit you into a voicemail box, which goes unanswered. Likewise, the email contact forms simply forward to the resellers. Very useful.
The reseller is domainsnare.net, which is also related to mailsnare.net. Not recommended...
Re:So when is it GoDaddy's turn? :p (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Tucows (Score:2, Informative)
https://manage.opensrs.net/ [opensrs.net]
The same username & password that you use with the reseller should work.
Re:Political Issue (Score:5, Informative)
More accurately, they caved to a DMCA request from News Corp because a list of MySpace passwords were posted on the full-disclosure mailing list, which seclists.org archives.
You can see the seclists.org posting [seclists.org] and the
What's more, GoDaddy offers to unlock domains it has shut down for a fee. I don't know about where you come from, but where I come from, we call that "extortion."
Here's where things went wrong. (Note: IANAL) In order to file a DMCA with GoDaddy, GoDaddy's relationship with Seclists.org would have to be subject to one of the first four provisions of Title 17 Section 512.
Those are:
a. Transitory Digital Network Communications (i.e. network routing, No)
b. System Caching (No)
c. Information Residing on Systems or Networks at Direction of Users (No, it's not hosted by GoDaddy)
d. Information Location Tools (Not by the definition given in this section, which is linking to it from a search site/directory)
So, where is News Corp claiming to get this justification? For that matter, since when do passwords fall under copyright?
Re:Political Issue (Score:2, Informative)
Re:How about some back story as well? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:story? (Score:5, Informative)
2 owners got into power struggle. One locked the other out, the other locked everyone out.
Effect:
1. you cannot renew domains,
2. Support cannot help (just promise)
3. You do not have auth codes to move your domains away
4. Finance system does not work
5. domains are changing data randomly -> dns settings
For me: my domains were to expire, so I deposited money. Renewal failed, money disappeared, domains expired.
I spent hours on the phone, they promised to renew manually. Now whois shows it is renewed, Regfly shows it is not. Info changed back to their nameservers and "expirefly".
So some of my domains I renewed and I paid for are making pay-per-click for them, losing ranking and customers, and I cannot even change the nameservers or transfer them, because they show up as "expired" in their system.
Just make a search for "registerfly" and you will see all kinds of horror stories.
I am looking at spending over $400 for unnecessary renewals, and who knows what in revenue. I am in the process of finding a good lawyer and see what I can do about this mess
I fear though, that for the time a lawsuit would go through they would declare bankruptcy and retract to their Miami Beach villas (yes one owner lives there).
Namecheap (Score:3, Informative)
I had heard very good things about Namecheap [namecheap.com] for sometime so I transferred all my RegisterFly domains there this morning and everything went smoothly. For those interested in Namecheap, use coupon code "marchmadness" to get $7.99 transfers instead of $8.88. This coupon code isn't associated with me in anyway.
Re:story? (Score:4, Informative)
People get confused about the protections of a corporation. It protects investors that aren't involved in the decisions. If the two owners caused the trouble, and it would be possible to prove in court (provided you subpoenaed the right documents), then sue the company and name the owners as co-defendants. You can't sue owners just because you think the company will go bankrupt. But you can sue the person at the company who made the decisions that harmed you (regardless of whether they are owners). That way, you can get judgements from the owners directly. If they have director/officer insurance (nearly all do) and you have a reasonable case, you will get quick cash. Insurance companies know that settling is cheaper than a court battle, no matter who wins. And if it does go to court, you'll get your losses, and your lawyer will have a nice new Miami Beach villa. If the company declares bankruptcy, as well as both owners and neither had appropriate liability insurance, then you'd be screwed, but I think the chances of that are relatively small, not to mention the changes in bankruptcy laws designed to screw the little guys would actually hit them (it's harder to get judgements wiped away via bankruptcy now).
RegisterFly hasn't turned over the data to ICANN (Score:3, Informative)
ICANN had already invoked the "provide backup copy of registrar data" provision of the Registrar agreement, which requires that, on demand, any registrar provide ICANN with a backup copy of the registrar's data in a standard format. RegisterFly didn't comply.
That data isn't lost, though. There's a source of backup WHOIS data. Try DomainTools [domaintools.com], which maintains copies of all WHOIS and DNS data. So if you need to prove domain ownership after RegisterFly shuts down, there's a way.
Re:So when is it GoDaddy's turn? :p (Score:4, Informative)
Wrong... (Score:5, Informative)
Meanwhile ICANN was had issued several notices to correct these issues are lose accreditation. This week ICANN made good on its threat. A lot of people lost domains due to problems RegisterFly started having long before the news picked this up.
Mike Zupke from ICANN has stepped in and has been helping RegisterFly customers obtain authorization codes on locked accounts (with a good deal of luck). Likewise eNom, whom RegisterFly was originally a reseller, has been helping customers who were unaware of the shift (eNom terminated its agreement with RegisterFly effective I believe at that start of this month) retrieve domains RegisterFly had hold of (ProtectFly, RegisterFly's whois/privacy service made some of this more difficult).
Renewals for clients that were eNom registered (though the reseller program) probably didn't even realize RegisterFly wasn't in fact their registrar (RegisterFly communicated the eNom's whois through a backend API, so you could manage domains seemlessly without realizing it).
Auth code can be difficult to get, but no matter what now that ICANN finally has stepped in a little patience and you will get your domain.
The best single source for real information is RegisterFlies [registerflies.com] who apparently intend to stay on after the end of this debacle and become a source for information and help with other domain registry issues. They have a big help and there are a lot of people there going through the same thing.