The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers late on Friday terminated the Registration Accreditation Agreement under which embattled domain registrar RegisterFly operates.
In the 15-days-in-advance formal notice required under the RegisterFly RAA, ICANN notified the registrar it must cease operating as an ICANN-accredited registrar no later than March 31 and must remove all "ICANN-accredited" logos from its website immediately.
"Terminating accreditation is the strongest measure ICANN is able to take against RegisterFly under its powers," ICANN President and Chief Executive Officer Dr. Paul Twomey said.
"ICANN has been frustrated and distressed by recent management confusion inside RegisterFly," he continued. "I completely understand the greater frustration and enormous difficulty that this has created for registrants."
Before March 31, RegisterFly is required to unlock and provide all necessary authorization codes in order to facilitate transfer to other registrars of the nearly 2 million domain names it administers. All registrants wishing to transfer away from RegisterFly before March 31 should be allowed to do so efficiently and expeditiously, the ICANN notice stated.
After the agreement is terminated, ICANN can approve a bulk transfer of all current RegisterFly domain names to another ICANN-accredited registrar.
"Of course, RegisterFly does not have to wait until then," Twomey said. "They can request ICANN approve a bulk transfer immediately. I call on RegisterFly to act in the interests of registrants and seek such a transfer from us straight away."
Partially as a result of the RegisterFly situation, ICANN intends to host a forum to discuss reform of its registrar-accreditation policy and process during its general meeting March 26-30 in Lisbon, Portugal. A set of questions and points to inform the discussion will be made public prior to the meeting.
During the first week in March, a U.S. District Court resolved a dispute between RegisterFly's owners, but the decision did not resolve long-standing allegations of fraud, mismanagement, and financial malfeasance within the company. On March 8, ICANN threatened immediate withdrawal of RegisterFly's RAA if the company did not rectify domain registrants' inability to transfer their domains to other registrars and other contractual breaches. Domains the company had not allowed to be transferred were to begin transferring March 12, according to ICANN.
