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It's Official: Registrars Cannot Hold Domains Hostage Without a Court Order
Stunt Pope writes "Back when the City of London Police issued those 'takedown requests' to domain registrars, most complied. However, as previously reported here, easyDNS didn't. A bunch of the taken-down domains wanted to move to easyDNS. One problem: their registrar wouldn't let them. It took awhile, but easyDNS fought it. They've finally gotten a ruling (PDF) under the ICANN policy that ordered the hostage domains transferred."
how about like when whole domains are being used for malware, phishing, or fraud?
do we have to go thru a court to get a registrar to do something? that isn't reallllly that good of news.
namesearchhere.com is being used for botnet clickfraud. along with probably hundreds of others... now the registrar can just sit on their hands and say... welp. nothing i can do but charge fees. my hands are tied!
registrars are making money of DGA, clickfraud, and all manner of shitty activities. now they can really drag their feet.
EasyDNS is a great registrar. Some years ago I had an issue with one of my domain names because a law firm in North Carolina registered a very similar name. The only difference was that they inserted a hyphen in their name and I didn't have one. Naturally some of their clients omitted the hyphen in the address and I received the emails instead, which I passed on to them.
That was a mistake. The law company was very angry at me, and they accused me of intercepting their mail, using my domain in bad faith, etc. They ignored the fact that my domain name was registered over 5 years before they registered their name. They attempted to get EasyDNS to lock my domain and transfer it to them. They attempted to harass both me and EasyDNS. Eventually they attempted to take my domain through ICANN name dispute resolution proceedings, which failed. They even attempted to get the FBI involved, which resulted in an interesting interview with two agents, but nothing else.
EasyDNS was wonderful. They investigated and they decided there was no reason to interrupt my domain service. They supported me through the resolution proceedings. I would not use any other domain registrar for any domain name I really care about.
EasyDNS isn't the least expensive registrar, but they aren't the most expensive either. The fact they in Canada (and therefore outside USA jurisdiction) is an added bonus.
the City of London is a privately owned corporation. I would imagine their police are also.
Do not mistake London the city with the City of London.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/oct/31/corporation-london-city-medieval
Three Squirrels