Last Friday, March 15, ICANN announced the cancellation of its contract with a large domain registrar, AlpNames. This was quite a harsh step because a termination is usually preceded by several official notifications. However, in this case, ICANN’s actions were reasoned, as AlpNames had simply abandoned its clients. All of its contacts were unavailable for a week, and AlpNames CEO Iain Roache appears to have simply disappeared for reasons unknown while the company’s website reads that the SSL certificate has expired.
AlpNames is among the 40 largest domain registrars. It has contracts with 352 gTLDs and manages domains in 270 of them. According to the latest official data (published last November), 532,941 domain names were registered via AlpNames, a number that experts currently estimate to have reached 700,000, with 19,000 registered in .com and about 280,000 in .top and .gdn. The company’s popularity is due to its low registration fee, which has been available for some time. However, this policy also attracted malicious registrants. Anyone who takes on AlpNames’s rights will also get a complicated “heritage.” According to various data, many domain names registered by the company are used for illegal purposes.
So far, it is still unknown who will end up with these rights. Surprisingly, AlpNames can still be paid for its irresponsibility. According to ICANN rules, if a registrar cannot continue to fulfil its responsibilities, a replacement company to take on the registered domain names will be determined via auction. The money will be paid to the registrar that failed. However, Domain Incite notes that in this case ICANN may be forced to break its own rules if they are deemed unreasonable.
