ICANN applied sanctions in relation to one of its accredited registrars – a company called Brandon Gray Internet Services registered in Canada. For three months Brandon Gray is forbidden to register new domains and receive transfers from other zones. During this time the company has to present a full report that it had eliminated all discovered irregularities and stopped using deceptive marketing practices.
These practices were the reason of the sanctions and hatred towards Brandon Gray shared by the whole domain community. For more than ten years the company has been practically taking domains from competing registrars through its affiliated structures (Domain Registry of America, Domain Registry of Europe, Domain Registry of Canada, etc.). The scheme is very simple: a little bit before the expiration date of the domain (it is very easy to determine using Whois service) its administrator receives a letter that looks very similar to a standard invoice for a registration renewal. And many administrators in this situation automatically sign the document and transfer required sum of money, no going deeply into detail. In reality administrator signs papers for a transfer of its domain to Brandon Gray Internet Services and pays for services of this company.
Obviously these actions are deceptive. And for the last several years Brandon Gray have many times been sued, forced into settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission and had other incidents. However, the problem is that formally speaking Brandon Gray does not do anything illegal. All that raging opponents got was a phrase “present document is not an invoice”, which Brandon Gray was obliged to use in its letters. And even this phrase was so well hidden in the text of the letter that it was hard to discover.
ICANN received numerous complaints on Brandon Gray Internet Services’ actions but had its hands tied. However, they are provided in the new edition of Registrar Accreditation Agreement, where responsibility of the registrars over affiliated structures and necessity of protection of registrants from deceptive practices are specifically explained. As soon as Brandon Gray signed the document (which was required to continue registrar’s activity), sanctions were applied right away. Brandon Gray Internet Services has three months to present a report of its marketing activities, including samples of its mailshots, and elimination of irregularities and promise not to use deceptive practices again. If they don’t do this till October 17, the company will lose ICANN’s accreditation.
In the opinion of Sergey Kopylov, head of the legal department of the Coordination Center for TLD RU, domain registrars do resort to unethical methods to attract users and enlarge their client base. «In the majority of the cases the law is not formally broken, which means that it is rather difficult to put to justice a registrar for unfair competition. The only way to prevent such situations is by signing an agreement between the registrar and accrediting organization (in this case ICANN), so an accreditation agreement to a greater extend takes into account specifics of the business than general rules of law. Due to the approval of the accreditation agreement dishonest activity of the registrar in this specific case was stopped», he pointed out.
