Internet Commerce Association - ICA

LOS ANGELES, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- May 03, 2007 -- LA Names and CentralNic, Ltd. have completed the transfer of the .LA domain name to the CentralNic system. Dot LA has been available as the domain name designation for Los Angeles since 2001 and is now available on a wide scale. This means that businesses and organizations can now register domains like "MyBusiness.LA" or "MyName.LA."

ICANN's Application for Temporary Restraining Order Against RegisterFly Has Been Granted

After what must seem an eon of pain to damaged registrants using RegisterFly, action is finally underway to migrate mismanaged domains away from problem registrar RegisterFly.

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17 April 2007

The Internet Commerce Association (ICA) calls upon Congress and the Department of Commerce to exercise the strongest possible oversight over the increase in registry fees for .Com and .Net just announced by VeriSign. The seven percent increase for .Com and the ten percent increase for .Net are the maximum allowed under its registry operator contracts with ICANN, and come at a time when the pricing of other Internet services such as bandwidth, access and anti-hacker protection continues to fall.

Both increased to maximum allowed by contract with ICANN: .com increased from $6 to $6.42, .net increased from $3.50 to $3.85.  Comes less than one week after the meeting of ICANN, Lisbon, Portugal where such issue was never raised, and comes at a time when the pricing of other Internet services such as bandwidth, access and anti-hacker protection continues to fall.

At ICANN Lisbon, Portugal, Network Solution's Jonathon L. Nevett (Vice President and Chief Policy Counsel) read aloud what seems to be a start to more tightly monitor and protect against Registrar behavior.

President and CEO of ICANN, Dr Paul Twomey today called for major review of ICANN’s Registrar Accreditation Agreements (RAA) and the Accreditation process.

“What has happened to registrants with RegisterFly.com has made it clear there must be comprehensive review of the registrar accreditation process and the content of the RAA” he said. “This is going to be a key debate at our Lisbon meeting scheduled for 26 - 30 March 2007. There must be clear decisions made on changes. As a community we cannot put this off.”

Days after the ICANN Termination was supposed to ensue for RegisterFly, ICANN has pulled back their suggestions to address RegisterFly remedial considerations at an upcoming policy and pontification meeting.  Reaction coincidentally the night after the ICA posts regarding same issue.

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Termination of RegisterFly.com Registrar Accreditation Agreement

16 March 2007

The ICA sent a letter to ICANN bolstering support for PIR.

"The ICA supports adoption of the Excess Deletions Fee proposed by the Public Interest Registry (PIR) for .org domain names. This new policy would impose a “restocking fee” of $.05 (5 cents) for registrations deleted during the five day add/drop grace period when the percentage of such deletions by any single registrar exceeds ninety percent of the initial registrations made within a calendar month...."

ICANN’s not exactly advertising this—no conspicuous notice appears on its home page and, more curiously, no update has been posted by the Ombudsman despite two prior postings about RegisterFly in the past week. A member of the general public would be hard pressed to find out that any action has been threatened.

The ICA acts on your behalf!

Phil Corwin, counsel to The ICA questions Paul Twomey - President and CEO of ICANN, on the accreditation and remedial steps to be taken concerning the tens of thousands of complaints and problems of lost domains and potential livelihoods related thereto, with regards to the Registrar: Registerfly.com.