A customer asked me this question today and I was not able to provide a definitive answer. What happens if a registrar goes belly up? Are all their customers given the opportunity to login and transfer their domains to a registrar of their choice, or are all the domain accounts just purchased by some other registrar?

Vito

the details of you owning the domain are kept at the registry
so if they sell domains at $5 and make next to nothing and decide to close you could still transfer the domain to another registrar

i think, as ive never seen it done before

actually thats not entirly true, if a registrar goes belly up then your screwwed you will more than likely lose any time you have remaining with them as well as your domain name unless they sell to another registrar in the final hours. if a reseller goes belly up (an enom or tucows or or or reseller) then your fine in the case of tucows they hand off the domain names to another reseller in that region im not sure how the rest do it

Steve

Wouldn't ICANN have provisions in place for this type of thing? Surely they must have considered the possibility of a registrar going broke...

Vito

Keeg is 100% incorrect, I have actually discussed this with a contact over at Register.com and the owner of the domain would in fact have the opportunity to move the name to another registrar.

ICANN doesnt care as they dont get paid to care.
remember the only people to get money for the sale of domain names is the registry and the folks in charge of the root nameservers that would be the good people over at verisign and we all know they dont give a damn either. Once ICANN has accredited a registrar their job for them is over other than policy enforcment

Steve

Originally posted by Keeg
actually thats not entirly true, if a registrar goes belly up then your screwwed you will more than likely lose any time you have remaining with them as well as your domain name ........

Steve
This sounds scary!!
I am sure is not going to be like this way...registrants are so unprotected in this kind of situation.

What happened IF , i say IF, NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC. goes bankrupt. Then what is the fate of the name: microsoft.com ?????

Originally posted by Keeg
ICANN doesnt care as they dont get paid to care.
The truth is: ICANN is PAID to care.

For your peace of mind, vito (or that of your client):
http://www.icann.org/registrars/ra-agreement-17may01.htm#3

esp. 3.2.3 and 3.10

i've seen such situation with some registrar i think first america, they usually get bought by another registrar and move all domains to that by providing new login page to current customers.

although its very rare that registrar goes out of business, because they have nothing to lose, now big hosting companies are their own registrars :)

Yup Keeg, you need to make sure you are giving an accurate response; its no problem to be slightly off, or 'get it wrong' on some of the minor details, but for your entire post to be wrong is a little annoying :\.

nameslave, so it appears the registrar is required to provide full info on all domain accounts to ICANN. Then presumably would all domain owners be contacted and given an amount of time to transfer domains elsewhere?

Vito

Luke2 you may find my post annoying but it isnt inacurate, when a company goes out of business the responsibility it carries ends as well as any contractual obligations to you as well as ICANN, if tried in vain to assist people with getting their domain names moved with registrars that go out of business on about a dozen occasions (two different registrars) it simply isnt possible.

Steve

Keeg, don't know if you were just doing something wrong but your statement that people would most likely lose their domain if their registrar goes under is very inaccurate.

I believe that if a registrar was actually going bankrupt, to save face, ICANN would simply have another registrar quietly take over their accounts. That's what they do in banking. It makes sense for the new registrar. They have all these new accounts which will most likely renew with them (most people are lazy about this stuff). And all the new registrar has to do is provide a few extra servers online to accomodate the extra whois requests and DNS settings and maybe some extra customer support. If I was a registrar, I would jump at the chance to expand my business that way (depending upon what they were selling the domains for in the first place).

Originally posted by Keeg
Luke2 you may find my post annoying but it isnt inacurate, when a company goes out of business the responsibility it carries ends as well as any contractual obligations to you as well as ICANN, if tried in vain to assist people with getting their domain names moved with registrars that go out of business on about a dozen occasions (two different registrars) it simply isnt possible.

Steve


I think you really need to read how domains work and the full ICANN agreement, and other documents on this subject.. ICANN can move domains from one registar to another without the original registar's intervention.. So if it happened to be run by two school kids and they just disappear ICANN can just move all domains and its registery information to another ICANN accreditated registar...

And what two differnt registars that went out of business? Were they ICANN accredited? Were they US registars? Was the contact information fully correct for the domains? Did the administrative email work?

:eek:

Wow, I thought this thread would be 1 or 2 replies at most with a simple answer.

Looks like the thread was needed for all to read (and learn)...

:D

Vito