This article is more than 1 year old

ICANN: we can help Registerfly mess

ICANN shows its frownie face as carnage continues

The landslide of bad news from Registerfly has continued, as ICANN created a forum for dispute resolution for this mess, and Registerfly customers desperately tried to shift their domains to other registrars before they vanished into cyberspace.

The romantic and professional break up between Kevin Medina and John Narusewicz, which had led to acriminonious and very public allegations of gross mismanagement of corporate funds that were frittered away on such vanities as male prostitutes and liposuction, and which resulted in a power struggle for control of the company, concluded with a thud.

Narusewicz, Medina's former lover and Registerfly's corporate secretary, had sued Medina in federal court in New Jersey to remove Medina as CEO and force him to sell his stake in the company.

District Court Judge Peter Sheridan ruled that Medina could not be removed as CEO or forced to liquidate his holdings under New Jersey law, but, in something of a face-saving move - under a federal statute that allows judges to advise litigants to appeal if the judge feels the law in question to be unsettled - recommended that the plaintiff Narusewicz do so.

Not that it matters; the decision effectively closes the books on Registerfly. Although the judge expressed unease with the results of the decision, the appeals process is far too lengthy and unwieldy to save a company as near to dissolution as Registerfly.

The silver lining in this black cloud is that ICANN has finally acknowledged publicly that it is in fact responsible for ensuring that accredited registrars live up to their responsibilities in the Registrar Accreditation Agreements (RAA). The Registerfly fiasco has generated such an overwhelming outcry that ICANN has pulled its head out of the sand, and - get this – is actually trying to help people out of this mess, albeit with pretty mixed results.

Initially, ICANN denied everything, even refusing to post negative comments about Registerfly in its blog. Denial, of course, is always the first stage; grudging acknowledgement follows. After extolling the virtues of the registry competition engendered by the accreditation process, Paul Levins, ICANN's new point man for this train wreck, admitted last week that ICANN bears reponsibility for enforcing its accreditation standards.

Subsequent blog entries detail a plethora of technical glitches on the Registerfly side that prevent authcodes from being released, followed by some aggressive finger wagging by ICANN. The failure to release authcodes has been a major impediment to transferring domains to other registrars. The piddly statistics on domain transfers provided by ICANN yesterday only reinforced a sense that ICANN's recent change of heart is oriented more toward future problems than toward Registerfly.

And then, the coup de grace - a bizarre privacy feature called ProtectFly, which nobody seems to be able to turn off, turned out to be the culprit. Why nobody at Registerfly told ICANN about it, or turned it off themselves, is unclear, but it did lead to a cumbersome workaround and this priceless thread.

Comment by

Scammed Again

2007-03-14 03:46:55

EUREKA!!!! Thank you Registerflies.com… If you wish to switch off ProtectFly and get your Auth Code, this is how you do it…Takes about 2 minutes…

1. Create a new FREE account at RegisterFly.

2. Login to your original account and "push" your domains with ProtectFly to the new account… Under change of ownership. When transferred, ProtectFly is not enabled… yiphee

3.Login to your new account and goto manage domains. Click the + by contact details… Click "configure" Your Auth code will be at the bottom of the page. Hope this helps.

Comment by

Peter

2007-03-14 04:20:06

That approach does NOT always work; I think it depends on WHO the registrar was for the domain. I tried that on one of my domains that is missing an auth code and was registered early last year, while RF was still an ENOM reseller. No auth code appeared.

Comment by

Paul Levins

2007-03-14 08:29:13

:-(

Now that says it all. ®

More about

More about

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like