RegisterFly To Handover Data To ICANN

Although I normally don’t talk about what other companies are up to here, the RegisterFly situation is of such gravity that it would be silly not to. It also affects a small number of our clients.
If you haven’t been following the news in the media (both online and offline) let me summarise it for you very briefly.
RegisterFly were an ICANN accredited registrar. However, unlike the bulk of ICANN registrars they had never been accredited directly, as they actually purchased an existing registrar ie. they got their accreditation through an acquisition.
Whether all the details of what happened internally will ever come to light or not is doubtful, but ICANN’s briefing document(PDF) is quite revealing.
In essence the company had issues both technical and business related which led to a large number of complaints. ICANN finally pulled their accreditation, but then the registrars (domain owners) faced the problem of moving their domains elsewhere.
You can follow the saga as it unfolds on the ICANN blog