A number of leading European domain registrars expressed their concern about the situation in the domain industry because the European Court of Justice has ruled the "safe harbor" principles between the USA and EU invalid. According to them, European companies were able to transfer customers’ private data to US companies as long as the recipient promised to abide by EU privacy protection rules.
The problem is as follows. According to the contract with ICANN, all domain registrars are required to weekly update the information on registrants and to transfer it to an independent third party for storage. This measure is for the fact that if a registrar faces fraud or different problems, registrant has an opportunity to prove the rights for a domain name. The majority of registrars used Iron Mountain services for this purpose. It is not only one of the world leaders in the sphere of deposition and data storage, but also signed the contract with ICANN. According to this agreement, the corporation subsidizes the expenses on data storage to Iron Mountain. Thus, Iron Mountain service was almost free to registrars.
However, this is the US company, and after the cancellation of "safe harbor" ruling European registrars can't provide clients' personal information to it. Therefore, they have to look for the same European service, to pay and to increase the cost for users. In this regard, about 20 European registrars applied to ICANN. They urge the corporation to sign the similar agreement, as it was signed with Iron Mountain, with one of the European companies. Otherwise, American registrars will get clear market advantage before the European colleagues.
According to the decision of the European Court, "safe harbor" principles can be used until the end of the year. Thus, ICANN have a little more than one and a half months to bring back justice and help the European registrars.
