Registerfly - Domain name pirate ICANN Enom GoDaddy

ICANN Announced Registerfly update May 16

Thursday, 17 May 2007

Yesterday ICANN made an announcement on their site as follows:

A deal will be announced later today that it is hoped will finally put an end to the situation where people are unable to get at their RegisterFly domains. An announcement is being prepared as we speak. ICANN still has a contempt order against RegisterFly for failing to follow the terms of the preliminary injunction.

Yesterday we waited patiently for the announcement but at the end of the day, no announcement was made with regards to the Registerfly Debacle.

ICANN bloggers asking some good questions

While waiting and getting impatient, the commenters over at ICANN had asked some very good questions with Regards to Registerfly. JP commented with:

Let me start by saying, with the amount of time ICANN has taken to deal with the RegisterFly crisis, we would appreciate timely updates. The last blog posted stated details would be posted later today. urprise, no details.

On the important issue at hand, how our domain difficulties will be resolved.

Any process ICANN attempts to use must account for the following situations:

Domains with no auth code.

Domains with whois protection

Locked domains

Domains registered thru RegisterFly, but showing enom as registrar [Enom has been complicit in permitting RegisterFly’s conduct for some time and has even used the situation to extort redemption fees.] I speak for many domain owners when I say I want my Enom based names renewed out of redemption and transferred to another registrar at no expense to me. Enom is legally and morally responsible for its resellers actions while they resold.

Domains showing RegisterFly as Registrant, but missing from my account control panels. (registerfly removed my management to many names, despite them still being current and showing my information and dns in whois)

Domains with altered whois information. Many do not provide owner info or were alered by registerFly without authorization.

Names in redemption, pending delete, deleted and otherwise locked up because we could not renew or transfer while ICANN negotiated (desipite months of complaints) and then proceeded with litigation.

Deleted names that have been appropriated by third parties, despites ICANN’s order to make RegisterFly names delete prohibited.

Compensation for lost time on our domains. Although the recieving registrar may not be liable for RegisterFly’s actions. It is legally arguable ICANN is responsible, thru its delayed response. I’d like the 6+ months lost on my registration period added to my transferring domains.

Improperly transferred names. Several of my names were transferred from Godaddy to RegisterFly. RegisterFly reported the transfer as failed, but the whois shows the registrant as RegisterFly an GoDaddy no longer has the names, so they did transfer successfully. These names do not appear in my control panel.

You can read the rest of JP's comment on the ICANN Blog but something that really stood out was a comment by Rick that was followed up with a comment from Kieren McCarthy. Here is the statement by Rick:

The only large body of evidence I see is that 900,000 RegisterFly customers have been ripped off and ICANN has done nothing.
If the ICANN executives were really concerned about the 900,000 RegisterFly domain holders they would have moved aggressively months ago to contain Kevin Medina and RegisterFly.

My domains are still hijacked by RegisterFly and that is really the only body of evidence that matters.

My view is we’re responsible for letting the Department of Commerce put ICANN in place. ICANN is yet another toothless government entity that seems to be messing up the web more that anything else. We should all be contacting our Congress and Senate representatives and letting them know exactly what they have allowed to happen.

Kieren followed up with:

If you are unable to find evidence, I am afraid you haven’t been looking very hard.

You will find, I believe, 24 updates on the situation on this blog alone. There have been a number of official announcements by ICANN, two comment forums and an updated information page on the public participation site.

An extensive FAQ has been produced and regularly updated to answer most questions. There has two, large public meetings on the RegisterFly in which anyone was able - and was encouraged - to contribute. A factsheet gives the background to the dispute. A formal review of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement has been announced, publicly, complete with questions. A report is already running through ICANN system. At least one further public meeting will be held at the upcoming meeting in June.

There is also a very public court case brought by ICANN against RegisterFly in which ICANN has made all its papers available and in which ICANN has received a temporary restraining order, a preliminary injunction and most recently a civil contempt order against RegisterFly.

ICANN also announced - and received expressions of interest in - a moving registrar role in order to get people in touch with their domains. An active response designed for the occasion.

You are confusing frustration and anger over the fact that you cannot gain access to your domain with perceived inaction. Understandable but, I am afraid, incorrect.

Kieren McCarthy
General manager of public participation, ICANN.

Stepping back in time a bit, ICANN was aware of the problems with Registerfly long ago. Take a look at this article Feb. 22, 2007. Kieren, in case you may have missed it, Mike Zupke made a statement to me in an email in January:

I am very familiar with the many websites and web-forums that have sprung up over time regarding shoddy and inadequate service provided by RegisterFly. I am also familiar with the types of specific complaints ICANN receives regarding this registrar / reseller.

Please understand, however, that ICANN is not a federal or state agency. We do not have a general police power, nor do we have the ability to enforce laws or private contracts between registrars and registrants. ICANN's power is derived from the Registrar Accreditation Agreements (RAAs) we hold with all accredited registrars, and as such, we can only legally require a registrar to take actions (or abstain from taking actions) that are specifically addressed in those agreements. (You can find a copy of the agreement online at http://www.icann.org/registrars/ra-agreement-17may01.htm.)

Read the rest of this statement in this article Feb. 22, 2007. I then took that time to go into detail on just how Registerfly had broken their RAA agreement with ICANN and Mike Zupke's response was: "I offered you what assistance I could and you threatened lawsuits. Accordingly, you will not receive further correspondence." You can find the entire conversation in this article.

ICANN knew what was going on with Registerfly over a year ago. So, did ICANN respond to the situation in a reasonable fashion? ... Absolutely NOT. Is ICANN helping today? ... Yes they are - thank you! Why today and not a year ago? ... that's something that Mike Zupke answered above.

The bottom line here is that ICANN didn't start doing anything until they started getting the bad press. Registerflies.com and the people surrounding this website were a big factor in motivating ICANN to act. Had the above conversation and articles not been exposed like they were and Registerfly stop sending ICANN the money, this situation could have realistically continued for another year. Thanks to everyone that has participated, this didn't happen.

While I'm not trying to dig up old bones, ICANN has no defense for the comments made by Mike Zupke. Mike Zupke, in his position with ICANN is largely responsible for what's happened in regards to Registerfly and for the damages that have occurred not only to the registrants but also damages suffered by ICANN and the bad publicity. Had Mike Zupke not simply blown our complaints off and acted in a reasonable fashion to protect the interest of Registrants, we wouldn't be dealing with this situation today.

Attention Mike Zupke - I've sent you an email dated 4/2/2007 that you never responded to:

I'm setting up a reviews section on Registerflies for registrars. One thing that I heard recently is that most of the domain registrars (accredited) are owned by a few businesses. I heard Enom owns over 100 Accredited Registrars and also that Domain Sponsor owns a similar amount.

Could you please clarify this? Please send me a list of Registrars with the owners of the registrars. Even though we have 800+, if only 200 companies or less own them, then this is something that needs to be known.

How many Registrars does Kevin Medina own? Please get back with me

It's my suggestion to you that you respond to this as this is a legitimate question. ICANN has stated that they will support a community or website that will implement reviews and ratings... we're waiting on a list of accurate data!

As far as everyone else and their domain names, keep thinking positive! We should expect to hear something today.

For additional assistance, I signed up with Downdoggy (Nathan - who has helped this website), as a Godaddy Reseller. Go to DomainPar.com to see the new site. This has been set up to offer the lowest possible prices on all domain name and hosting products. If anyone has any issues with this, please don't hesitate to contact myself or Nathan at DownDoggy.com. When an announcement is made on the Registerfly situation and if there is some sort of promotional code through Godaddy, I will post it on the DomainPar.com website. Thank you all for your continued support!

Comments

Registered | 2007-05-17 13:46:36

Thanks for the update and all the time you have invested on this site. I am one of the lucky (few?) that have managed to transfer all of my domains away from RF (the last one transfered out yesterday, and it was one that was expired in grace period), so for any others out there with hostage domains I feel for you, just keep trying.

Even though I don't have any more domains held hostage at RF I am keeping up on this issue because of the way it is being handled by ICANN. There is a lot to say about this, much of it was summarized above, but even an ICANN cheerleader would have to admit that, at best, they have really dragged their heels with regards to the handling of the RF scandal. There are many that claim that the Internet would still be running tomorrow if ICANN disappeared today, and after their handling of this situation I have to ask myself - if ICANN did not exist could this RF fiasco have been worse? That is a difficult question to answer, but food for thought.

Festus - Who Owns Who?

Registered | 2007-05-17 13:49:53

Who Owns Who? That is a very legitimate question that should be answered by ICANN.

It is imperative that we know this immediately to prevent being defrauded through another registrar owned by Kevin Medina!

Brando - thanks

Registered | 2007-05-17 13:59:14

Thanks for this update and all the work with this site!

I was able to get one out of 80 domains names over to Enom on Monday. They were very good and fast to get it moved since it was for a high traffic site that I have. Dobroah was amazing and stayed on the phone with me through the whole thing.

I am in the process of taking control of about another 50 that are listed as being with Enom. I just sent in all my information to Enom and they said it takes one or two days. Hopefully that will go smoothly.

The other 28 or so names I am waiting on an Authorization code from RegisterFly to be able to transfer them. With out that code I am jammed. I hope the ICANN announcement today fixes the issue so we can get our names that are with RF transferred out.

Brandon

jv703

Registered | 2007-05-17 14:23:18

Icann posted this document on their website yesterday. http://www.icann.org/legal/icann-v-registerfly/icann-v-registerfly-order-to-show-cause-16may07.pdf

It is a court order requiring RegisterFly and Kevin Medina to appear in person at the court

jporven - Thanks for quoting my ICANN Po

Registered | 2007-05-17 14:39:49

Admin, thanks for quoting my post on the ICANN blog (as JP). Its obvious ICANN is in full liability protection mode. I'd hoped to play some of the facts I've uncovered close to the vest so as not to tip ICANN off; but I imagine any resolution of the names will lead to the majority of those affected putting this ordeal behind them without taking ICANN to task for the losses they've permitted. So here goes:

1. ICANN definitely knows it hasn't behaved correctly. Here's the proof:
http://forum.icann.org/lists/rteam/
They've deleted all archives related to their RegisterFly team and also all the posted customer complaints going back months. I understand why they did this. If I was responsible for a large part of this mess, I'd be thinking about wiping evidence also. This list didn't disappear by mistake, search the other folders on there and you'll find all messages neatly archived going back years, except the RegisterFly related stuff they removed (http://forum.icann.org/lists/). Convenient, huh?
ICANN and Kieren insist they've been forthcoming with information, but their actions belie the truth. They've only posted what suits them and removed all culpable info they could find.
2. ICANN keeps saying it is doing all it can, but any reasonable person can surmise they've dragged their feet and avoided the cost of litigation for months, if not years. Let's assume they don't have very many regulatory powers, they do have an enforceable contract with their registrars. ICANN could have enforced their contract and at a minimum RegisterFly and Kevin Medina would have been alerted somebody was taking a look at them. More prudent would have been to consider the large numbers of complaints (admitted on their own Ombudsman's blog) and determine they should escrow and audit data in case the situation got worse. At a maximum they did not complete their duties (proper escrow of data on a timely basis) and failed to prevent the foreseeable damages their failure to do so would cause (that's negligence).
3. ICANN does not have the interests of domain owners at heart, in fact they could care less. I could make the argument their slow response speaks volumes to this; but I'll let Mr. Mike Zupke himself tell you how little they care about us:
In response to a an inside tip from an alleged RegisterFly employee not much was done. The employee stated security breaches were occurring where data was being changed and domain owners who issued chargebacks against RF were having domains pushed to credo and stolen. The tipster also provided login information to RF's systems so ICANN could take action or verify the veracity of their claims. Mr. Zupke felt this "was not any immediate danger to registrants' and the tip was "not actionable". This is a perfect example of ICANN's inaction. Mr. Zupke understood what the implications of this were he said "From what I can tell. . .Kevin is pushing names that were taken away from people bc of chargebacks to his own account." He also mentions that Frank Fowlie "seemed to think it was pretty serious" So what did ICANN do, did they report such an important alleged tip to the FBI (since it involved credit card chargebacks and theft), demand RegisterFly explain its actions, contact the purportedly affected domain owners to warn them , etc? Nope, none of the above. Instead they first spoke to in house counsel and the determined the tip was "not actionable". In other words they were under no legal obligation to really do anything. I imagine council reasoned it'd be safer to avoid getting involved in the mess as alerting authorities to any tips might lead to further questions about what ICANN knew and didn't act on.

jporven - Thanks for quoting part 2

Registered | 2007-05-17 15:06:50

But that's solely my personal opinion.
Note to admin and legal counsels [please contact me thru this forum if you'd like to provide me with space to upload the complete texts of the tipsters communication to ICANN as well as other materials].

4. ICANN knew they had to step in to get this mess resolved but hesitated at every turn. Daniel Halloran writes: "The registries should be coming up with creative ways to assist registrants and consulting with us about giving them flexibility if necessary -- not dragging their heels and arguing with us about the minimum steps they'll take and only on our written instructions?". There are several problems with this, it shows ICANN knew little would be done unless they quickly provided "written instructions" to the registries as to what steps to take. This immediately stopped any progress as it is clear both Rgeitries and ICANN wanted to keep passing the buck to each other. Why should the onus be on registries to come up with creative solutions and why should it matter if they want written instructions or not. In the absence of action, ICANN should have taken the bull by the horns and directed the registries on what to do. But, here lies the rub as they say. Whoever took action against RegisterFly risked being legally responsible for the outcome or damages of such action. So our domains expired, were locked and stolen while the registries said it was ICANN's problem and ICANN said it was the registries problem. As I see it, there was only one issue. ICANN enforces registry agreements, they could have easily come up with a solution. Lets see how hard it would be to come up with one. Now, keep in mind I don't have a team of legal counsel like ICANN, and arguably less technical knowledge of the DNS system, but I do have a secret weapon nobody who's prolonged this mess has used: common sense. If the registries wouldn't act without a formal notice, give them one. Now, I hear ICANN saying they aren't a regulatory body and can't force such actions. Well, actually they can. Here's how. "Registrars must adhere to consensus policies" (http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-06mar07.htm). ICANN's board of directors issues consensus policies (http://www.icann.org/general/consensus-policies.htm) So, if ICANN needed emergency registry action all they needed to do was bother their Bord of Director members to hold an emergency meeting (you can even do that via email or over the phone in most jurisdictions)and pass measures as a consensus. Then the registrars would be bound to comply or ICANN could apply immediate pressure for breaching their agreement. Amazingly ICANN wouldn't have to be a so called regulatory body or 'nuthing

Wanna see me really get you other domain owners angry? Here's one more thing they could have done. While registerfly was imploding, their whois was still functioning for a large amount of that time. So, we could have moved our domains using the "Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy" (http://www.icann.org/general/consensus-policies.htm) and submitting a Standardized Form of Authorization (FOA) with accompanying registerfly whois screen shots and ID. If registerfly didn't respond (as they usually didn't) the transfer must be approved by default within 5 days. I know its not a "save-all" as proxied names couldn't be rescued, but I think it furthers my point that ICANN's repsonse can really only be judged as incompetent. Why didn't ICANN tell me about the above, why didn't the registries? Don't know don't care; I just want my names back and thats all that matters, get it ICANN?

cymoo - Intent and Purpose

Registered | 2007-05-17 16:32:54

http://www.ftc.gov/os/1999/10/icann.htm
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2006/06/icann.shtm
http://www.icann.org/presentations/leibowitz-mar-26jun06.pdf

elloco - THANK YOU VERY MUCH- REGISTERF

Registered | 2007-05-17 17:31:36

I really don’t get it,

I understand someone who own a couple of domains and didn’t realize what was going on at RF, but when hearing people saying having dozens and perhaps hundreds of domains stuck at RF , hijacked, unable to move them out by now , I’m astonished!!

WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ?

This saga unfolded for a year and took a high steem the last 3-4 months, so, if you had so many domains at RF, how the heck you didn’t Think to move them out FAST ?

A lot was said at forums about what was happening at RF and at list one website, REGISTERFLIES made a great effort to Warning RF customers.

I saw the warnings, and I took immediate action , so I managed to move out of RF all my remaining 50 domains just in time before unlock codes and data were wiped out.

However, I went also through rough times till this was accomplished.

I want to NOTE a few more things, critics and credits

ENOM took full advantage of RF victims including myself, ripping us off even further by charging 30 dollars renewal fees on domains that were already paid renewal fees to Registerfly.

I had to pay $120 to ENOM to rescue 4 domains kept hostage by them in complicity with REGISTERFLY

Perhaps ENOM may have reversed that policy now( after realizing the class lawsuits that will fall on them) but few months ago, they made sure to get as much cash as they could out of RF crisis.
ENOM helped RF to keep our domains hostages.

ICANN was well warned, notified, informed of Registerfly unlawful methods, long ago, since over a year at list and did nothing till recently. Tons of Complains were sent to ICANN .

Now ICANN is very active trying to solve the problem , GREAT , finally, ( perhaps to reduce liability) but, WHY not a year ago ?
As somebody said before, too little and too late!!!! people have lost millions!!

Finally, there is someone who I will really want to credit , these are the guys behind REGISTERFLIES.com website.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH Registerflies for your support and updates, you are the ones who have really helped save my domains and hundreds of others..

admin - Thank you!

Super Administrator | 2007-05-17 18:01:55

Thank you for your comment and your words of encouragement. As you well know, I've been kicking and screaming about Registerfly for a long time now. It's nice to hear that you were able to get your names out and I know that others have saved themselves from this mess.

I want to thank everyone who has been involved on the site because this was a community driven effort of many that came together to share stories and ideas.

The work is far from done. There is still many people who don't know what's going on and there are still many policies and procedures that have to be written to safeguard the internet and it's future.

vbkvbk - Where have I been?

Registered | 2007-05-18 06:43:37

elloco wrote:

I really don’t get it,
I understand someone who own a couple of domains and didn’t realize what was going on at RF, but when hearing people saying having dozens and perhaps hundreds of domains stuck at RF , hijacked, unable to move them out by now , I’m astonished!!
WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ?

I am one of those with more than a dozen domains with Registerfly. And until the week before ICANN terminated their accreditation with ICANN, I had NO difficulties. I have been purchasing, transferring (in and out), renewing and updating as required.
So, WHERE HAVE I BEEN, I guess one of the lucky ones for all that time, but now completely stuck, with no notice.

EVENTHOLDER - AG's regulate fraud and Comme

Registered | 2007-05-17 22:12:46

I was told by PAyPAl that I had no recourse to file a dispute with RFy Becasue It was jsut their shopping cart. This was by phone. UNtil I found the receeeeeeeipt I thought the only thing I could do was contact the bank.

BUTTTTT.....Yhe recoopit says I had recours, of course its's past the 45 days...and I don't think Rfly had odne anything...B

Now that doen't make soence does it....IF any other business has a shopping cart and they take your many for nothing they can't tell you you have no recourse now can they.

Sp How many people have used that PAYPAL shopping cart only to be defrauded?.....The FTC has got to look at this, especially since PAYPAl is still the shopping CArt , still open to rob consumers....We need a new category so we can list how many people should and can take action against PAYPAL as well.

robsth - thanks, i was lucky

Registered | 2007-05-18 18:17:07

I guess i was 1 of the lucky ones ,after finding out what was happening i tryed to renew my domain, as i still had enough time to do so in regfly it was allready said it had expired ,as my domain was 1 of the domains still registered under the enom name after some fight with regfly i could transfer it away and renew it at enom.
They obviously used the situation as they should have opend up my domain for transfer like 1 or 2 years ago but as they didnt ,i only could transfer to them.(enom)
Luckely i took screenshots of all this stuff on regfly .
I will be with them for 1 year but most likely will transfer away from enom as i feel robed as i payed for renewal at regly allready .
I did get 2 emails from regfly for help in transfering my domain.But as it was in the hands of enom now they couldnt do a thing .
I didnt get any more emails from them when i asked to return the cash i payed by paypal for the renewal that didnt happen.(figures)

Still i feel lucky hat i only had 1 domain and i was after some struggle able to renew it.

My feeling go to the ppl who cant .
All this shouldnt be posible i meen look how fast goverment reacts when something like piracy comes up, now we are the ones beeing pirated but now things are dificult and need to go slow .
These guys should goto jail period.Just like the normal ppl would when doing something wrong.
To bad some goverment guy didnt have his domain there as then things would have gone down diferent.
Then they ask themselfes why ppl dont trust and believe in goverments anymore .

At least i dont.

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ICANN bloggers asking some good questions