Internet agency sacks 3 registrars

Global coordinating internet agency, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has announced the sack of three registrars over breach of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) of May 2001.

ICANN gave the names of these fallen registrars to include South America Domains Ltd doing business as namefrog.com, Simply Named Inc (SimplyNamed.com) and Tahoe Domains Inc have not had their RAA renewed upon expiration for failure to comply with the requirements of the agreement.

According to ICANN, notice to this effect dated July 30, 2009 tagged ‘Non-renewal of Registrar Accreditation Agreement have been dispatched to the trio via fascimilie, courier and electronic mail.

A copy of the letter addressed to the chief executive officers of the aforementioned companies made available to ITRealms Online, read in part that their agreement with ICANn has elapsed due to the breach and inability to renew same.

The sack, ICANN explained was as a failure to provide a working Whois service in pursuant to and compliant with Section 3.3 of RAA.

The three-page notice signed by ICANN’s Director, Contractual Compliance, Stacy Burnette and sent to the affected three companies, the internet coordinating agency, stated that Section 5.4 of the RAA provide or apply upon expiration for renewal of accreditation in compliance with its obligatons under the RAA.

Based on failure to comply with Sections 3.3 of the RAA, ICANN said it does not intend to renew these registrars upon its expiration on August 5, 2009.

ICANN noted that failure to provide public access to data on registered names in pursuant to Section 3.3 of the RAA.

Section 3.3.1 of the RAA, ICANN said requires registrars “provide an interactive web page and a port 43 Whois service providing free public query-based access to up-to-date data concerning all active registered names sponsored by registrar for each Top Level Domain (TLD) in which it is accredited.”

ICANN said that such data requiring updated from registrars include the name of the registered name, the names of the primary nameserver and secondary nameserver(s) for the registered name; the identity of registrar which may be provided through registrar’s website and the original creation date of the registration.

In addition, ICANN said it expects to get update on the expiration date of the registration, the name and postal address of the registered name holder, the name, postal address, email address, voice telephone number and where available, fax number of the technical contact for the registered name.

Burnette recalled that on July 17, 2009, a reminder was sent to the affected registrars by email and fax that Whois service was not compliant with RAA requirements.

“Specifically, your registrar’s Whois service did not provide any Whois data when ICANN staff attempted to access Whois data regarding domain names sponsored by ‘you’,” part of the letter read.

Pointing out that “You were requested to correct this contract violation immediately and report back to ICANN staff when the violation was corrected. ICANN staff never received a response from you or anyone representing ‘you’ regarding this matter.”

ICANN said it never received any response from the affected registrars as at the date of the notice.


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