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.'"

Comments

Rules can be ignored

[nurb432]

Laws, less so.

Re:Rules can be ignored

[eln]

ICANN gets most (all?) of its money from the registrars it's supposed to be policing. There's an inherent conflict of interest there.

Re:Rules can be ignored

[eln]

The fact that they get paid per domain of course is what gives them the motivation to dramatically increase the TLD space to the point where the whole concept of a TLD is completely meaningless. This also is a flawed part of the system.

The thing with the registrars, though, is that ICANN is effectively at the mercy of the registrars due to how the whole system is set up. ICANN can't just unilaterally block a major registrar, because then that registrar's customer's will be adrift, and of course the registrar will tell all of them that it's all ICANN's fault their domains don't work anymore. So, ICANN gets massive pressure from the registrar's customers (who are all losing millions per minute of course) to fix their domains, and ICANN has little choice but to comply. If they take a hard line, those customers may eventually move to another registrar, but they'll carry a lot of bitterness toward ICANN, and maybe they start lobbying their Congresspeople to pull ICANN's charter.

Add to all of this that the number of domains registered is heavily dependent on the amount of marketing these registrars do to try to convince people they need their own domain names, and it becomes apparent that ICANN is really completely beholden to the registrars, even though they technically have the ability to shut them all down.

Who sets the rules?

[brasselv]

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.

Try this: Don't get suckered in my the marketing

[teknopurge]

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.

Consequences

[jpmorgan]

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.

Re:Try this: Don't get suckered in my the marketin

[jpmorgan]

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.

Re:Internet Domains are under free market purview

[eln]

The entire purpose of the Domain Name System is, or was, to enforce structure in naming on the Internet. When it was under the purview of the old Network Solutions, under the guidance of the NSF, domains were well-organized, expensive enough to deter squatting, and TLDs actually meant something.

Under ICANN, the whole system has descended into chaos. It's laughable to see ICANN trying to exert any sort of control over the registrars now, when they've spent the last 10 years doing whatever the hell the registrars wanted them to. The whole system is broken, and ICANN has no effective authority to do anything about it. Some sort of regulation with teeth is badly needed, and ICANN is completely unequipped for that sort of thing. Their feeble attempts to assert authority this late in the game are laughable.

Re:Perhaps ICANN needs the force of law.

[vertinox]

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

Do you really want congress deciding who gets what web page?

Ignoring The Elephant In the Room

[damn_registrars]

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.

Re:Internet Domains are under free market purview

[Otto]

The simpler and less damaging way is simply to revoke their new domain registrar capabilities. If the servers start rejecting their registration requests, then they'll clean up their act damn quick.

Re:Internet Domains are under free market purview

[eln]

GoDaddy's massive marketing apparatus generates more domain registrations than would otherwise exist. They convince people to buy domains they would not otherwise buy. The total number of registrations would likely go down without them, which would directly impact ICANN's revenue stream.

Re:Internet Domains are under free market purview

[dgatwood]

Piss them off anyway. GoDaddy is a bunch of leaches on the face of the Internet. Although I've never used GoDaddy for providing domain names (I'm very picky about who I trust with something that important), I tried using them for hosting and SSL certs recently. My GoDaddy experience was so bad that I actually wrote my first Slashdot journal entry about it. The gory details are chronicled here.

Godaddy is absolutely the most inept company I have ever dealt with; they make Fry's employees look knowledgeable, caring, and competent. They make Brooklyn camera shops seem above board. They sell services, then back out of the deal, screw up the refund afterwards, oversell their shared hosting servers, don't monitor what people do with them (allowing a few customers to cause multi-minute site outages), don't respond to customer complaints other than suggesting ways for you to pay them more money, require you to do things that defy the laws of physics in order for them to pay attention to your complaints... basically, they have single-handedly changed what the "S" stands for in ISP. They are to ISPs what the BOFH is to a proper IT manager.

I think it would be absolutely AWESOME if ICANN revoked their registrar status. It's not Chapter 7, but it would be a good start.