ICANN has terminated its contract with the OpenTLD. This company is part of the Freenom group and is owned by the same owners as the Freenom registry. The latter is known for its highly controversial business model: it manages several ccTLDs, the largest of which is the Tokelau .TK. Domain names are provided to registrants free of charge, but the company, to put it mildly, is not very careful about how legitimately they are used.
Now Freenom is going through a difficult period: it was sued by Meta (recognized as an extremist organization in the Russian Federation), and the authorities of Gabon and Mali refused its services as a registry of their national domains. The termination of ICANN's contract with the OpenTLD registrar was another significant blow to the company. The official reason for termination in the ICANN message was cited as three cases of violation of contractual obligations by the registrar over a 12-month period, as well as failing to cure breaches within 21 days 21 days.
ICANN is now launching the De-Accredited Registrar Transition process, which will see domain names managed by OpenTLD transferred to another registrar. The Domain Name Wire reports that we are talking about approximately 10,000 domain names registered in the gTLD .COM.
