ICANN picks 28 registries for abuse audit

ICANN has kicked off its annual compliance audit, and this time it’s focused on registries rather than registrars.

It’s picked 28 gTLDs based on whether they’ve not been fully audited before, whether they have more than 100 domains, and whether they show up a lot in abuse blocklists (excluding spam blocklists).

Only one gTLD per registry has been picked, which might be why the number is lower than previous audit rounds.

The audit will entail sending a questionnaire to each registry to ask how they are complying with each of their commitments under the Registry Agreement.

Registries have already been told if they’ve been picked. ICANN hopes to have it all wrapped up in the third quarter.

Bye-bye Alice’s Registry

One of ICANN’s oldest accredited registrars has had its contract terminated for non-payment of fees and other alleged breaches.

Alice’s Registry, which has been around since 1999, has been told it’s no longer allowed to sell gTLD domains and that whatever remains of its managed domains will be transferred to another registrar.

The termination comes at the end of more than two years of ICANN’s Compliance department pursuing AR for not paying its accreditation fees, not operating a working Whois service, not implementing RDAP, and not showing its company is in good standing.

The registrar’s web site hasn’t been working in many months, and until its accreditation was suspended last October it had not responded to ICANN’s calls and emails.

Its responses to Compliance since then did not help its case, so ICANN made the decision to terminate.

GoDaddy acquires DNAcademy

GoDaddy has acquired DNAcademy, which provides online domain-investing learning services, for an undisclosed sum.

The two companies announced yesterday that GoDaddy has not only bought the content of the DNAcadamy web site, but also the services of founder Michael Cyger, who will become GoDaddy’s first director of education.

While the deal brings DNAcademy’s content to a potentially vastly larger audience, it’s not clear that all existing customers will benefit.

Cyger posted that people currently on a $499 annual membership will have their contracts honored, but it’s still not clear what will happen to those who handed over $949 for a “lifetime” membership.

“Lifetime members: Although the DNAcademy customer base was not acquired, GoDaddy values the relationships DNAcademy cultivated with domain name investors and will make best efforts to provide access to the new offering,” he wrote.

DNAcademy is not accepting new memberships while its services are being integrated with GoDaddy Domains, which is expected to take several months.

For GoDaddy, the secondary market is now the big driver of domains revenue, contributing about two thirds of its growth last year.

The company already makes it fairly easy for its customers to list their domains for resale, and presumably it expects DNAcademy to help turn more of its millions of registrants into domainers.

101domain throttles its business in Russia

101domain has become the latest registrar to say it is limiting its business in Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

The company, owned by Altanovo Domains, said today it is suspending all new accounts, orders and inbound domain transfers for customers located in Russia.

It will also no longer sell or accept transfers for domains in Russian-linked TLDs .ru (including third-level names), .рф (.xn--p1ai), .МОСКВА (.xn--80adxhks), .рус (.xn--p1acf), .дети (.xn--d1acj3b), .su, and .tatar.

“We will continue to process renewals of existing services for the time being, however this may change at any time and without notice,” the company said.

101domain follows fellow registrars Namecheap, IONOS, and GoDaddy in announcing what effectively amount to commercial sanctions against Russia.

Industry bodies CENTR and ICANN, along with ccTLD registry Nominet, have also committed to concrete actions to sanction Russia and/or support Ukraine.

GoDaddy stops selling .ru domains, commits money to support Ukraine

Domain registrar market-share leader GoDaddy will no longer sell .ru domain names, and has reached into its pocket to provide financial support for Ukraine relief efforts.

In a two-pronged response to the Russian invasion, the company outlined several measures aimed at both supporting Ukraine and putting some sanction-style pressure on Russia.

It’s not kicking out existing Russian registrants, but it is, according to a statement:

• Removing the Russian version of our website
• No longer supporting new registrations of .ru and .ru.com
• Removing all .ru domain names from our domain name aftermarket
• Removing the Russian Ruble

“What’s happened in Ukraine is horrible. We do not condone the unwarranted aggression from the Russian Government,” the statement says.

For Ukrainian customers, GoDaddy is renewing their products and services due to expire in the next 60 days for free.

“Customers can also contact us at any time, and if they need something specific, we’ll help them as best we can,” the company added.

It’s also donating $500,000 to humanitarian relief in Ukraine, donation-matching its employees’ gifts, and offering to help pay its Ukrainian contractors’ salaries for the next 60 days.

Other registrars to share their support for Ukraine so far include Namecheap, Tucows, IONOS and Gandi.

Gandi says it supports Ukraine but WON’T cut off Russians

Gandi has become the latest large registrar to issue a statement about the war in Ukraine, saying that while it deplores the violence it won’t be disconnecting Russian customers.

CEO Stephan Ramoin wrote that Gandi “condemns” the invasion and is “working on supporting Ukraine, according to the suggestions of our Ukrainian tech colleagues”, adding:

The internet is about including all humanity and working toward a greater goal, giving every human being a voice and a clear vision of the world, not excluding and antagonizing one group of people against another. That’s why we want to support the people of Russia and Belarus expressing their disagreement with this war. We don’t need to escalate, war is not the answer.

Cutting off Russians and Belarusians would only encourage the creation of different closed worlds and digital networks. We have chosen to hold out our hand to these people. We are not at war with them. Only their leaders, and their madness, need to be stopped. We will of course react quickly against war propaganda of any kind.

The statement follows those coming from Namecheap and IONOS, which have both this week announced their intentions to remove most Russian and Belarusian customers.

Based in Paris, Gandi is one of the oldest registrars and has over 1.3 million gTLD domains under management.

Now IONOS kicks out Russian customers

IONOS has become the second major registrar to say it will turf out its Russian customers in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

The company’s board of directors today issued a statement expressing support for the people of Ukraine and saying:

To support worldwide sanctions on Russia, we are not accepting any new customer contracts from Russia and are also terminating existing relationships with Russian customers. This also applies to business relationships with Russian service providers and suppliers. We are currently reviewing all existing supplier contracts.

The directors said that many of their colleagues come from Ukraine and have family in the region.

It’s not immediately clear whether the ban applies to domain name registrants as well as hosting customers, and what options Russian registrants have been given. An IONOS spokesperson said the details are still being worked out.

Earlier in the week, US-based registrar Namecheap, which has its customer support based in Ukraine, gave its Russian registrants notice to transfer their names elsewhere. It later said it would offer free domains to Russian dissidents.

While a little smaller than Namecheap, IONOS is part of Germany-based United-Internet and, with over five million names, a top-10 registrar in terms of gTLD domains under management.

Namecheap offers free services to Russian dissidents

Namecheap will offer “free anonymous domain registration and free web hosting” to anti-war protest web sites based in Russia or Belarus.

The registrar said in a statement today that the move is in response to imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s call for war protests in Russia.

The offer modifies the company’s hard-line position from earlier in the week, in which it banned Russians altogether from its services and gave registrants there a week to get out.

Namecheap’s English-language customer service is based in Ukraine, including in cities under heavy bombardment this week.

Russians interested in the free hosting offer are asked to contact customer service for details.

Namecheap boss goes nuclear on Russian customers

Namecheap has banned all Russians from its services in a comprehensive, surprising, and unprecedented expression of solidarity with Ukraine, the invaded country where most of its support staff are based.

CEO Richard Kirkendall said yesterday that Namecheap, which has over 14 million domains under management, “will no longer be providing services to users registered in Russia”, in an email to Russian customers.

Namecheap says it has over 1,000 employees in Ukraine.

It uses a company there called Zone3000 for its English-language customer support, from three locations across the country, mostly in Kharkiv, one of the cities that has been particularly affected by the Russian invasion over the last five days.

Kirkendall has given Russian customers until March 6, one week from the time of the email, to move to another registrar.

The email was posted online, and I’ve confirmed with Namecheap that it’s accurate. Kirkendall said:

Unfortunately, due to the Russian regime’s war crimes and human rights violations in Ukraine, we will no longer be providing services to users registered in Russia. While we sympathize that this war may not affect your own views or opinion on the matter, the fact is, your authoritarian government is committing human rights abuses and engaging in war crimes so this is a policy decision we have made and will stand by.

If you hold any top-level domains with us, we ask that you transfer them to another provider by March 6, 2022.

I’m told the words “any top-level domains” just means ‘any domains in any TLDs’.

Kirkendall went on to say that anyone using Russian and Belarusian ccTLDs — .ru, .xn--p1ai (.рф), .by, .xn--90ais (.бел), and .su — will no longer be able to use Namecheap’s email or hosting services.

After some negative replies, accusing Namecheap of going too far, Kirkendall wrote:

We haven’t blocked the domains, we are asking people to move. There are plenty of other choices out there when it comes to infrastructure services so this isn’t “deplatforming”. I sympathize with people that are not pro regime but ultimately even those tax dollars they may generate go to the regime. We have people on the ground in Ukraine being bombarded now non stop. I cannot with good conscience continue to support the Russian regime in any way, shape or form. People that are getting angry need to point that at the cause, their own government. If more grace time is necessary for some to move, we will provide it. Free speech is one thing but this decision is more about a government that is committing war crimes against innocent people that we want nothing to do with.

It’s by some way the strongest stance anyone in the domain industry has yet taken on the war in Ukraine.

Namecheap intends to issue a formal statement outlining its position later today.

Noss pressures bankers, lawyers over Russian oligarch links

Tucows is putting pressure on its outside bankers, lawyers and accountants to come clean about their relationships with Russian oligarchs.

In a series of tweets on Saturday, CEO Elliot Noss said he’d emailed these longstanding partners to ask them about their policies with regards with regard oligarchs’ “essentially laundered” money.

The implication of course is that Tucows would be unhappy to work with any firms whose policies are found lacking.

Here’s the email, reconstructed from Noss’s tweets.

We are writing today because of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. We note our longstanding relationship with your firm.

We are asking you, and all of our professionals, about your firm’s policy regarding Russian clients, particularly those associated in any way with the current regime. As we imagine you know, most major Russian businesses are either directly or indirectly controlled or associated with the Russian regime. As you also likely know, the funds these companies and their principals, let’s just call them oligarchs, siphon off of these businesses are essentially laundered with the active support of major law firms, banks and accounting firms.

We do not expect you to respond with a firm policy immediately BUT we do expect you to confirm in writing that you have shared this request with your superiors in a way that will most effectively lead to action and we expect you to manage our expectations as to when we may know of your firm’s position.

If you have any questions or would like to discuss this further, please do not hesitate to reach out.

Respectfully Yours,

Elliot Noss
CEO
Tucows Inc.