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850K RegisterFly Domains Moved To GoDaddy
miller60 writes "The long-suffering customers of RegisterFly should soon be able to manage their names again after ICANN arranged for the transfer of its 850,000 domains to GoDaddy.com. ICANN terminated RegisterFly's accreditation back in March but it took a court order to pry the domains loose so they could be transferred to another registrar. For those just joining the story (see earlier discussions on Slashdot), RegisterFly is the New Jersey domain registrar that collapsed amid management chaos in February, leaving most customers unable to manage, renew, or transfer their domains. ICANN, which was widely criticized for its inability to do more for RegisterFly customers, expressed relief at the saga's apparent conclusion."
Is RegisterFly a publicly traded company? I'd like to invest.
If you are about to mod me down, keep in mind that this post was most likely sarcastic.
Why godaddy? Why could people not chose what register to transfer to?
Visit http://www.crunzh.com/ for free software. Mac/Lin/Win
Well, this should allow us to finally answer the long-standing question: "Is GoDaddy better than a bunch of thieving incompetents?"
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I suggest you have it transferred again.
So you transfer these poor folks' domains from one registrar known for shady practices to another? How about at least transferring them to an OpenSRS registrar, or (gasp!) releasing all holds on the domains and giving the customer the choice of where to transfer to?
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
This reminds me of when Register.com faced delisting. I wondered what would happen to my domains which were registered their at the time should they have gone under... At one point in time, they (register.com) were the only ones next to then Network Solutions who had the accreditation to register domain names (1998-1999ish) -- and shortly afterwards others were allowed to become registrars... Anyhow, back then - even now perhaps - there was little one could do in matters to moving domain names between registrars. I've had to move domains back and forth and it was a nightmare. There was no oversight, no set rules for a registrar to follow, nor any mention of failover should a situation like this happen. And I don't mean failover in the server sense. I mean failover in the registrar going under sense. Its a dual edged sword makes you kind of wish there was one sole registrar... In matters of this article, I wonder why they gave control of the domains to solely one registrar. Why not split them up evenly or give domain owners a choice of who they want managing their domains... Perhaps there should be an Open Source registrar...
Infiltrated dot Net
I've used GoDaddy plenty of times in the past with no problems. Imagine the sheer number of domains they have registered, if only a few get shut down here and there it's probably a negligible percentage. I'm sure similar situations have happened with other registrars too.
--
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I don't know what registerfly ran on, but given that godaddy seems to be on windows, it might be that a sizeable % of those 850k domains will be counted as "windows" in 1,2,3 ... therefore confirming imminent apache death.
GoDaddy.com might not be a big improvement. I know that I've not been impressed with them at all. I don't care HOW cheap their hosting gets, I'll certainly never host anything with them again. The hosting company I normally use is about $7 a month. I get a live English speaking CLUE-FUL human no matter what time I call tech support and I seldom have to call. By comparison, GoDaddy is about $3 a month and I've spent more time on the phone with GoDaddy than I do with my mother. Our connections to our database keep failing, an issue which GoDaddy is either unwilling or unable to correct. When your entire web site is a dynamic, database driven site that effectively puts us off the air. Spending hours with an outage that my friends in Atlanta, GA; Washington, DC; Portald, OR; Hamburg, Germany; Calcutta, India; Hong Kong; Tiawan; and Nairobi, Kenya can all see but technical support staff at GoDaddy can't seem to spot is flatly unacceptable. Then they have the nerve to tell me that it's my ISP and they can't help me. I've certainly learned my lesson and for less than the cost of a latte every month I can have peace of mind and web site that works.
2 cents,
Queen B.
HDGary secures my bank
"I've used GoDaddy plenty of times in the past with no problems."
Sounds like you've never been on the wrong side of a media conglomerate.
Then again, neither have I, which would also explain why I've never had problems with GoDaddy either. That story referenced by GP certainly gives me pause, at least.
More Twoson than Cupertino
So... if your domain is held hostage by RegisterFly, and during the time when you cannot renew it, it expires, what happens? We all know how domain slammers will buy it up within 30.2 seconds of expiring and becoming available again, which means that a lot of ordinary folks are out of a domain name. Scary.
technical writing / development
My condolences for your troubles. I'd be annoyed if I had to use GoDaddy, too.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
It's not about whether you've personally had any problems. Frankly, it's a matter of principle, and since it only takes ten minutes of your time and less than $10 of your credit card to transfer, it's well worth it. Don't support companies that engage in these sorts of practices, because sooner or later your apathy will make you end up screwed.
The hosting company I normally use is about $7 a month. I get a live English speaking CLUE-FUL human no matter what time I call tech support and I seldom have to call.
You want to give them a shout-out? I'm always looking for recommendations for solid hosting providers. (I used to recommend FatCow, and they really are nice guys there, but you have to pay a year in advance to get their $8.25/mo rate.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Personally, I'm a software developer running my own dev company. We've got servers and domains, etc. My friends think I'm somewhat of a brainiac type. But I'm really an average joe with many hands-on skills as well. I don't like being pigeonholed as just a nerd or a geek.
When GoDaddy comercials air I make a special effort to rep my registrar. You've got to admit, there's something cool and masculine about a domain registrar run by a former Marine that uses sexy women to sell domains. It's not your average nerdy/dry/boring domain registrar. I've used GoDaddy for over 5 years now. I've had many various types of transactions with them and I can say that they have always met or exceeded my expectations.
Theres a lot of hate for Godaddy. I thought I was the only one. Personally, Godaddy reminds me of Ronco, Vonage, or perhaps Lesko. Their marketing division is at least on par with those three.
On an unrelated note, who wears a suit covered in question marks?
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Imagine the sheer number of domains they have registered, if only a few get shut down here and there it's probably a negligible percentage.
Why are you so sure the problems are negligible? The story is quite revealing that GoDaddy has little to no respect for its customers when they take down an entire domain with almost non-existent effort to contact the owner (one attempt, then take down the site seconds later). Then they make it extremely difficult to get in contact with anyone to fix the situation.
To me that kind of behavior is extremely revealing. Personally I'd bet that this kind of treatment from GoDaddy is a lot more common than you'd think, and it just never gets reported until a higher profile site gets taken down.
AccountKiller
Since then and all the drama I had to see him go through it left a bad taste in my mouth for the company.
What this is really about was finding some registrar willing to take on the customer support load of cleaning up the mess. ICANN doesn't have a call center.
There are some interesting implications to this deal. For one thing, domain owners whose domains are now administered by GoDaddy have no contractual obligations to GoDaddy. So they should be able to transfer those domains anywhere, immediately.
Meanwhile, RegisterFly still hasn't complied with the court order issued Friday to put a notice on their web site within 48 hours that they are no longer a domain egistrar. They're even still taking registrations. I just tried their domain registration page, and it works at least up to the "checkout" point. So RegisterFly is probably in contempt of court.
Off topic? I guess you cant read my mind about a domain I have with Registerfly. Since I'm moving my other ones away from GD I sure as hell don't want it transfered over to GD.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I've supported the U.S. Government plenty of times in the past with no problems. Imagine the sheer number of people they have in their files, if only a few get tortured here and there it's probably a negligible percentage. I'm sure similar situations have happened with other countries' governments too.
Er, no. It is easy to transfer. And also they don't deal with commie countries like Cuba. I'd say GoDaddy is more of a company that lapdances for the US foreign policy. (see GoDaddy terms of service)
Aside: If GoDaddy.com wanted to help Cubans, they would want them to have as much access to the Internet as possible instead of filtering Cuban ips from resolving DNS for domains hosted at GoDaddy.
Aside 2: And if Cuba is so bad that US has a trade embargo against it, why not have a similar one against China? Oh, wait, it's about the money stupid!
Don't know about hosting, but Register4Less is a Canadian registrar that I've used. If you're a fan of the User Friendly comic, then going to http://uf.r4l.com/ will get them a little referral kickback to keep up and running.
One only needs two tools in life: WD-40 to make things go, and duck tape to make them stop. ~G.M. Weilacher
Call me jaded, but I don't think UF has any problem paying their hosting bills.
I can testify as a user of godaddy. This is not a happy ending.
Read radical news here
The Registerfly frontpage makes no mention of any ICANN-enforced doom, and indeed, their order system still lets you register new domain names. I wasn't willing to shell out the $10 to test if it would actually complete the order, but I have a feeling it would. Which would make them a scammer site. I wonder if we could get Google/Firefox to add them to their warn-on-view lists.
ICANN sucks because it likes to treat itself as a powerless victim. If they showed some real leadership they might get some respect.
How about, "All domain names are the property of their respective owners, and upon disreditation of a registrar ICANN will immediately move affected domains to an accredited registrar, from which the domain owner can further transfer their domains, if desired."
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Dedicated hosting or colocation, people. Pay for an SLA!
I used to think that until my dedicated server (at 1&1) needed a hard power reset (buggy server didn't always reboot) and it took them over four days to get around to pushing the button for me. Because it was rented, not colo'ed I couldn't even drive to NYC and press the reset button myself.
After all, I was only one customer - if I was on a shared host they'd have dozens to hundreds of unhappy customers if the machine was down.
I've gone to colo since then.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Really, can you afford to be that picky? The last time I checked, mentioning that I posted on /. caused women to swoon. Of course I don't date women that aren't supermodel/rocket scientists. And I'll be moving out of my parent's basement as soon as I land one.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Unfortunately you likely won't have a choice. You'll have to move them out as soon as Go Daddy notifies you when you'll be able to access them. Hopefully their arbitrary 60-day internal rule won't apply for these domain names. I'd imagine it'll take all 850K to make their message known.
David
DaveZan.com
eww godaddy, thats not the company that ruin your domains if you post more than a pixel of person-flesh is it? I would rather my domain stopped working...
Don't panic
There are other countries that nationalized stuff. Whether you get paid 20% or 5% compensation on your investment or none doesn't matter that much. It matters more that businesses and the country in question lose in the long term. There are many examples of countries, socialist or otherwise that do this. For example,
:) did the same thing except his error was to side with USSR and allow missiles to be put on the island. That is why the embargo is in place. For spite. Not for nationalizing anything. Otherwise we would definately see sanctions against Russia, or Colombia (US is being as much oil as before), or Zimbabwe. But no. Only Cuba.
* Zimbabwe - when Mugabe essentially nationalized all the "white farmer's land" and gave it to the black peasants. Zimbabwe is not communist. The idea was nationalistic. Now Zimbabwe has the highest inflation in the world. People can't even afford food anymore. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Zimbabwe
* Colombia - Chavez nationalizing stuff. Bad. Little compensation. Inflation is up to 20% last time I checked.
* Russia - Shell properties on the east cost of Russia (near Japan) got essentially nationalized for pennies on the dollar of the actual value of the properties. Russia has done this many times before. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukos for example.
* Bolivia with recent changes that are nationalizing oil and gas and possibly mining.
* Many more....
None of these countries are communist, yet, they are nationalizing and essentially stealing (or taking away what they rented?). Fidel (not Fido
The official reason is now "terrorist support" or something retarded as such. It is just political.
Anyway, going back to my original point about GoDaddy, GoDaddy cannot DO BUSINESS or PROFIT with Cuba. It doesn't mean it has to *censor* Internet from Cubans! Even if most Cubans don't have access to the Internet, I don't think that is the spirit of embargo (see Radio America for an example). And I don't think that is even what the intelligence agencies want that are still working on ways to get rid of Fidel.
Well, at least close :)