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Registrars Still Ignoring ICANN Rules
stry_cat writes "Over a year ago ICANN moved to clean up misbehaving registrars like GoDaddy. They released this scary sounding advisory. However, over a year later, problems remain. One company is now publicly complaining. Some of the biggest registrars are slammed for their actions. 'Register.com is one frustrating company. The ICANN policy clearly prohibits blocking a transfer of a domain name that has expired but not yet been deleted. Despite that, a customer trying to transfer a three-day-expired Register.com domain name told us last week that they refused to give him the necessary code to allow him to transfer — unless he pays them to renew it first. ... GoDaddy (and their reseller arm, Wild West Domains) have a different problem: They still block transfers for 60 days after a registrant's contact update, even after the ICANN update specifically prohibited doing so. They freely admit it, too. ... We see a similar problem with many transfers from Network Solutions.'"
Socialist attempts by ICANN to regulate and introduce market inefficiency in the domain-registration business are tantamount to introducing price controls.
Milton Friedman's free market efficiency theory proves that 100% market efficiency arises as a result of zero regulation, and our goal as denizens of the internet is to pursue maximal free market efficiency in order to further the interests of the public good.
Laws, less so.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=GoDaddy+sucks
I'm not that familiar with the process, but don't these registrars require accreditation from ICANN to operate? If so, then ICANN has full control here. Why don't they take disciplinary action against offenders?
This is something between scary and funny.
It's like the IRS complaining because too many people don't pay due taxes.
I'm not sure about the legal framework, but either ICANN has no way to enforce the rules (then it should refer to a different authority), or if they has such power, then go ahead and ban the guilty ones from providing the service.
"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong." (Oscar Wilde)
Anybody who hasn't figured that out by now needs to pay closer attention.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Those $0.99 domain registrations? Companies make their money up other places - like selling you addons, making it difficult to move, etc. Try using a smaller domain provider that has their system automated and doesn't pay people to come up with new ways to lock you in. Everything from requiring you to make other purchases after 12 months to only providing the domain registration with another pay service, that was free in the beginning. It's a shameless plug, but we do domain registration for our clients but it's more for convenience than anything.
Website Hosting
ICANN needs to figure out an enforcement policy. Perhaps it should order the root servers to stop accepting new registrations from registrars not following the rules.
It's a near perfect market, in the economic sense. The barrier to entry into the registration business is almost nil, it's all just some data processing. And as economics tells us, as a market approaches 'perfection', profit margins approach 0%. So it's not surprising that some registrars are resorting to shady business practices; the only people who can make money in the registration business are those who are willing to do a little lying and cheating.
What a bunch of monkeys, never fair for the little guy
100% Mortgage
The whole point of the internet is that its something the private sector can sort out... but, if Godaddy and ICANN cannot sort out their differences, and with ICANN being the authority the Gov't put in charge, then, the Congress needs to take this matter up. If Godaddy wants to thumb its nose at regulatory bodies, let them do it at least before ones that can suspend their license to operate and levy fines.
This is my sig.
wait until eu commissions take the matter into their hands when there are enough complaints. they brought microsoft onto the line about browsers. they can straighten up these shit too. jurisdiction issues ? what's wto good for ? i would be happy to see godaddy taught some manners.
Read radical news here
I tried to order a domain from GoDaddy once, after clicking through six pages of crap addons at checkout I decided the marginal savings wasn't worth it and moved to NameCheap.
A Magic the Gathering Article and Forum Aggregator
What can ICANN actually do to enforce any rules they put into place? From reading the initial announcement it just sounds like the corporate idiots at my work who spout out "That's a violation of our company standards!!!" at our sales teams then do nothing because the sales guys are the ones who pay their salaries.
Ave Molech Setting
The most profitable moves that registrars make in violation of ICANN rules are the ones that are almost never punished. Consider all the registrations that are issued with incomplete or outright bogus registration data, and how little ICANN has done about the registrars who are repeat offenders of that.
There is a reason why your favorite evil spamming domain has bad registration data, and there is a reason why it will stay that way.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The cheapest legit Registrars I've found were just over $10. The ones cheaper than that don't offer any privacy.
I'd never use a registrar like GoDaddy. Their privacy is totally fake - anyone can phone in and get your info.
Here's my question: This article lists some of the domain registrars that are performing shady practices, but what about a list of registrars that are playing by the rules and won't try to screw you over in some way? Or is the entire system such a mess now that there are no good ones left?
They still block transfers for 60 days after a registrant's contact update,
I *want* them to do that for my domain names. Let's face it: passwords get hacked. Even yours. If the the registrar where *YOU* am the paying customer still holds the domain name, that damage can be promptly undone. Good luck getting [random non-English registrar] to undo a stolen name without going through months and thousands of dollars with the UDRP.
In prohibiting this behavior, ICANN expresses a confidence in the system security which is unwarranted by the operational reality.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
If you are registered with a reputable registrar...
Say your registration for yourdomain.com expires and you've forgot about it because you were out on vacation for the last month and didn't see the e-mails.
With Network Solutions, they will keep that expired domain around for me to renew, even after it expires. So I don't loose it to a cyber squatter.
I've seen this with domains I've deliberately let go.
If they aren't allowed to do this, then I'm screwed if I forget to renew one of my domains.
I'm with the registrars on this one. It is a nice security feature.
I can't help but think that should Network Solutions disappear tomorrow, within a day, there would be a whole slew of companies willing to fill the void.
And as economics tells us, as a market approaches 'perfection', profit margins approach 0%.
Economic (supernormal) profit approaches zero.
Normal profits are the opportunity cost of your time/money/labor/etc.
Since they are considered a cost, normal profits are maintained even in a perfect market at equilibrium.
[/nitpick]
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Nodaddy
Gandi.net: the ultimate No-Bullshit registrar, in my experience.
Godaddy's bullshit only happens to Godaddy customers. And Godaddy customers are people who don't know how to use Google to find out who sucks and who doesn't. I'm not saying what Godaddy does is right, but it's like using Windows: if you look before you leap, you'll quickly realize how dumb leaping will be.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Good nitpick. :-)
Actually, you are illustrating that it quite far from a "perfect market". A perfect market requires perfect information (and, particularly, that the perceived utility that purchasers have when making purchase decisions perfectly aligns with the experienced utility they derive from purchases.)
In a perfect market, sellers could not resort to deception (either through dishonesty or simple omission) to manipulate purchase decisions.
The cheapest legit Registrars I've found were just over $10. The ones cheaper than that don't offer any privacy.
I'd never use a registrar like GoDaddy. Their privacy is totally fake - anyone can phone in and get your info.
Not everyone is looking for domain name privacy. I think it's sketchy to order online from a company that hides their domain name registration. I think it's an indicator of legitimacy when a business lists their correct name, address & contact info on a domain name registration.
Not everyone is looking for domain name privacy. I think it's sketchy to order online from a company that hides their domain name registration. I think it's an indicator of legitimacy when a business lists their correct name, address & contact info on a domain name registration.
Yes, a business. Some of us are people.
To see whether that's important to you, just ask the following question:
Do I want people looking at my site to be able to contact me directly.
Also consider the two following situations:
1) Your website has been hacked and is showing a fake IRS "register your details to receive your tax rebate" form. Do you want someone to be able to tell you this, or do you want them to ask your hoster/registrar to pull your site?
2) Your domain expires soon, competing registrars want to advertise to you to move your domain to them.
Here in the UK, private individuals can specifically opt-out of including their personal information in the WHOIS record and that's available through nominet, no matter who your registrar is.
I wish to remain anomalous
What's a good registrar to use? If providers like Godaddy are part of the problem.
1) Your website has been hacked and is showing a fake IRS "register your details to receive your tax rebate" form. Do you want someone to be able to tell you this, or do you want them to ask your hoster/registrar to pull your site?
Do you want someone to visit your home at night, armed and drunk, to demand that you give them the refund you promised?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
"Make their money up"? You mean that onerous cost of using CPU cycles and a few bytes of bandwidth to automatically process my registration? The marginal cost of a new domain is like 0.000003 dollars.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Ok, registrars are flagrantly violating ICANN rules and are thus probably in breach of their registrar contracts.
Why the hell is ICANN not revoking the shit out of them?
I am curious about your comment and godaddy's privacy. I was under impression there was no privacy in general to domains but goaddy would would charge you money so that the official information is kept by them and law enforcement would have to make a request to get that information. This is a valid question I am curious are you saying that anyone can get your info besides law enforcement even if you pay for their premium service I guess you would call it?
hmmm.. sounds like someone didn't read their own links. When you change the registrant at Godaddy it asks you to confirm that you won't be able to transfer the domain name.As stated in the ICANN policy " A registrantâ(TM)s objection to transfer is not valid unless it is obtained voluntarily.". No one makes you change the registrant prior to transferring the domain name. Simply change it after you make the transfer.... duh.
So the ICANN must be serious in their business and suspend GoDaddy and Register's accounts.
Because there is no consequence at all is why those thieves do whatever they want with our domains.
I use ThePlanet.com to register my domains and never had a single problem.
I got an ad in the snail mail from register.com offering a free domain registration, no further commitment. However, you need to provide a credit card so they could continue billing after the first year....at a rate of about $50 per year. I had a debit card about to expire in a couple months, so I thought, great, I'll take this free domain name, transfer it somewhere cheaper within the first year, and just let nature take it's course with register.com. I had little trouble getting the authorization code to transfer, just some extended hold time on the phone. But, what really got me, was after the first year when they billed my card, my expired card, and it went through. My card was a debit card from Paypal. I contacted them and they refused to correct that charge to my expired card saying it was a recurring charge and basically that expiration dates don't matter. I was pissed.
Is that 0.0003 U.S. cents or 0.000003 Verizon cents?
IRS
Â
UK
Â
Rules and Laws without Enforcement are not worth the paper they're written on.
Do I want people looking at my site to be able to contact me directly.
Yes at an email address that I check when i've got time, not at my low traffic important email address and not by phone or in person.
1) Your website has been hacked and is showing a fake IRS "register your details to receive your tax rebate" form. Do you want someone to be able to tell you this
Yes
2) Your domain expires soon, competing registrars want to advertise to you to move your domain to them.
Hell no, i'm happy enough with the registrars I use at the moment and i'm not going to trust someone who contacts me in that manner anyway.
Here in the UK, private individuals can specifically opt-out of including their personal information in the WHOIS record and that's available through nominet, no matter who your registrar is. .com/.org/.net .
I think that only applies to uk domains though, since the sites i'm involved with aren't really country specific and i've had the names for ages anyway i'm kinda stuck with
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Geez, for a while there I thought I was the only one having this problem. I have tried (and failed) to transfer domains away from Network Solutions. I've given up and stayed with NS (for those domains registered with them in the first place) because I just don't have the time nor energy to fight with them any more.
Registrars like NS have people by the balls because they know there is no enforcement of the rules.
Nothing will change until ICANN grows a pair.
The complaints about the big guys continue to roll in, and yet no one seems able to give me a good, trustworthy alternative that doesn't rip you off. I don't need hosting, only domain registration and SSL certs. Even the ones that some people like seem to have something shady going on- like no phone number provided (like Gandi). So, I'm still waiting... yes the big guys are bad, but that's all we have it seems. Which is why they can get away with it.
I have had past experience with GoDaddy.com not wanting to transfer a domain name that expired after the transfer request was initiated and trying to extort $80 from me for 'unlocking' my domain. I took 10 minutes off my busy day, wrote ICANN a nice letter explaining who my register was and the issue I was facing, and within a week, GoDaddy's customer service was personally calling me to let me know, they wanted to resolve that matter quickly. GoDaddy.com tried to pull same BS again by locking my domain for 60 days, just because I updated my contact information, after a transfer request was initiated. Just had to do a little ICANN name dropping, and my issue was fixed that day.
I think ICANN can't do much on its own, since its basically at the mercy of all the big registrars. However, if enough people knew about the ICANN rules and the role a registrars plays, I think the registrars would start to get in line, or fear loosing customers. But as it currently stands, with all the cheap domains, Joe Average wanting a domain name for themselves, and those that willingly pay the registrars, ICANN is sort of stuck between a hard place and a rock.
I registered skyleach.com in the 90s (forget the exact year now) but when I tried to move it to a cheaper registrar my transfer was denied and my domain was locked. Of course, since it had some decent traffic, espcially surrounding anything conerning battletech, it was purchased out from under me. A squatter has been sitting on it since.
The practice is anticompetative and dishonest and should be stepped on, HARD.
-SL
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
"Can I speak to tier 2?"
Seriously. If you're on Slashdot and are halfway knowledgeable (you've already power-cycled the DSL modem, trouble-shot your local network, etc) this is by far the best way to get your DSL service fixed by them. Their first line of operators only know how to read from a script. Their Tier 2 people have an actual clue about what is going on.
And when they say they're running a "line test", in certain locales that can reset local hardware. They may come back saying that they saw no problem, but the issue will mysteriously disappear. Be assured that it will come back, and you'll need to call them again.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
I lost several domains I've had for years - I paid to renew them with Yi.org, the reseller and DNS host, and while they charged me they never did the job. I contacted eNom, the registrar, and they made excuses as to why they they couldn't help me. They still held the domains in my name - for some domains they offered to fix it if I paid $160 extra fee each and some they flat out claimed they could do nothing. In the end I lost some and finally figured out I could grab them back on their partner NameJet for a mere $69 extra each. I never got a refund from Yi either - they stopped responding to customer service requests.
Another place I had some domains at, 1&1, locked the domains so I couldn't use them, transfer them, or renew them because I canceled my hosted server I had with them. I think this was just a case of a really bad user-interface and customer service.
All in all I've had bad luck with domains in the past couple years. Before that, for the previous 10+ years with multiple registrars, I don't remember ever having an issue.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I've been at the ass end of several transfers where I was told by my client (selling their web site) not to change the contact information since that would hold up the transfer. In all but one of these situations the new owners simple left me as the contact (in violation of ICAN policy). When the domains come up for renewal they will change only the billing contact and leave me as everything else.