(Update: GoDaddy to ‘rescue’ RegisterFly refugees.)
The author of a poker blog appears to have ginned up a workaround that gives desperate RegisterFly.com customers the ability to transfer thousands of domain names that have become inaccessibly ensnared inside that scandal-rocked registrar’s data systems.
In addition to demonstrating the ingenuity of poker players, this slow-moving RegisterFly “train wreck” has again highlighted the limitations (read: ineptitude) of ICANN when it comes to riding herd on rogue registrars, according to a BusinessWeek Online analysis that is so fresh it’s dated 10 days from now.
The trap for some 75,000 RegisterFly customers – who include the Easter Seals Society, the government of Thailand, and that disgraced, baby-dangling, washed-up pop star himself, Michael Jackson – is that they cannot transfer their accounts to another registrar without authorization codes from RegisterFly. And RegisterFly has been too busy driving over a cliff to be of any help in that regard.
According to Valentino Vicceztar, proprietor of “Poker Rouge Blog,” the workaround begins with opening new RegisterFly accounts for each of your locked-up domain names.
“The fascinating part of it all is that we (RegisterFly clients) could have transferred the domains long ago … had we known this loophole,” says Viccetzar in a press release. “If followed to the letter, (this 15-step process) should give you the authorization codes to start the domain transfer immediately.”
Here are the 15 steps:
1. Create A New Register Fly Account.2. Login into the Old RegisterFly Account.3. Click on Manage Domains4. Click A Domain Name5. Click On Change Ownership6. Click On “Push your names to another user”7. Click Continue8. Enter The User ID of The New RegisterFly Account9. Verify The User ID of The New RegisterFly Account is Correct10. Click Continue11. Select Each Domain Name to Push
12. Check the Check Box Marked “Change the Whois/Contact info on the names being pushed”
*** Check This Box Only if your Domains are Showing ProtectFly Information on a Whois Database, If it’s Showing your Real Information with Working Email Then Continue Without Checking the Check Box ***13. Login into Your New RegisterFly Account, Your Recently Transferred Domains Should Be All Unlocked.14. Click Change Whois Information And Get Authorization Code for Each Domain.
15. Begin Transfer to New Registrar.
Viccetzar says the workaround allowed him to rescue all of his domain names, while those posting comments to his blog reported both successes and failures.
According to the BusinessWeek article, there appears little hope that relief will be coming for RegisterFly customers any time soon from any other source.
RegisterFly customers aren’t just mad at the company. They fault the International Corporation for Assigned Names & Numbers (ICANN), a private nonprofit organization sanctioned by the U.S. and other nations to accredit registrars, for not moving fast enough to investigate and take action. It was only after a year of eroding service that ICANN on Feb. 21 threatened to revoke RegisterFly’s accreditation. “ICANN knew what was going on, yet they waited and let this train wreck happen,” says Philip J. Corwin, counsel for the Internet Commerce Assn., which represents companies that own domain names.
ICANN, per usual, says it’s done the best it can do.
Still, the organization sees the RegisterFly mess as a call to action. Paul Twomey, ICANN’s chief executive, plans on proposing reforms at a meeting of ICANN’s board and interested parties in Lisbon during the week of Mar. 26. For one thing, he would like ICANN to have more say over the activities of companies downstream from the registrars, known as resellers, who also sell domain names. RegisterFly was a reseller until it became a registrar in its own right last year. Twomey also favors establishing a training-certification regime for registrars. These would be the first significant reforms for ICANN since it was established in 1998.
In the meantime, frustrated customers will need to continue to lean on poker bloggers for assistance.
