The U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey has awarded formerly ousted Chief Executive Officer Kevin Medina control of embattled domain registrar RegisterFly.com Inc. Medina prevailed over rival John Naruszewicz, who in mid-February convinced a court to lock Medina out of the company based on allegations of financial malfeasance.
Although the decision resolved a dispute over ownership of the company, it did not heal the rift between the registrar and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. According to ICANN, RegisterFly must rectify domain registrants’ inability to transfer their domains to other registrars and other contractual breaches or it faces termination of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement under which it operates.
ICANN has demanded RegisterFly act immediately to provide authorization codes for any pending transfers. The domain oversight body also has demanded a meeting with RegisterFly and other relevant parties in order to resolve RegisterFly’s reported failures.
Of chief concern for ICANN at the moment is that "some customers may be experiencing difficulties in transferring their [domains] because they are not listed as the registrant, but instead have opted to use a privacy service." This is a particularly vexing issue for ICANN, as the privacy service, ProtectFly, also is owned and managed by RegisterFly. If RegisterFly defaults under the RAA or goes out of business, there is concern that data regarding registrants and their domains may be lost forever.
"If a name is hidden through a service of this kind, it is possible that no one aside from the provider of the privacy service can identify the customer; therefore, data escrow may be insufficient for ICANN to protect that data," an ICANN statement released Thursday noted. "In making a choice to use a proxy/privacy service, customers should be aware of balancing privacy against access to data."
The statement also assured the public, "In discussions with ICANN, RegisterFly agreed to assist people in those circumstances and will provide customer data [beginning] Monday, 12 March," which should facilitate transfers to other registrars beginning on that date.
In the interim, ICANN has persuaded the major generic Top-Level Domain registries to lock down all RegisterFly domains in order to prevent their deletion from the root directory or re-registration by others.
The ICANN statement continued, "We have provided additional questions to RegisterFly regarding how [the privacy service] data can be maintained in a manner that would permit access in the event that RegisterFly remains unable to fulfill its role as a registrar. Yesterday, we advised that [we] had obtained registrant data from RegisterFly. We are still confirming the accuracy of that data, but it appears ICANN is in possession of the vast majority of registrant data (a potentially significant step toward the protection of registrants in the case of RegisterFly business failure or de-accreditation under the terms of the RAA)."
Evidently, problems with RegisterFly are not new. The company has been accused by customers of mismanagement and fraud for almost two years, according to ICANN files.
According to ICANN, RegisterFly administers nearly 2 million domain registrations.
