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Epik to reveal its owners soon
Kevin Murphy,
February 1, 2024, 17:01:55 (UTC),
Domain Registrars
The new Epik registrar has been asked to reveal the identities of its officers and owners shortly, I’ve learned.
The company last night revealed that it had passed through ICANN’s due diligence process, over six months after Epik LLC bought the assets of Epik Inc following a long financial mismanagement scandal, allowing it to take over its corporate predecessor’s accreditation.
Epik said the ICANN process had confirmed that Epik Inc founder Rob Monster and final CEO Brian Royce were not involved in Epik LLC in any way, but the company did not reveal who the owners or managers of the new company are.
I asked ICANN whether this was kosher under the Registrar Accreditation Agreement, which obliges all registrars to publish the names and positions of their officers, as well as the names of any ultimate parent entity, on their web sites.
“We are reminding them of that obligation and expect it to be addressed shortly,” ICANN vice president Russ Weinstein told us.
Breaches of the RAA can lead to suspension or termination of the contract, but I don’t believe ICANN has ever initiated public Compliance proceedings against a registrar based solely on a relatively minor infraction.
Regardless, it seems that after half a year of mystery, the speculation may very well come to an end soon.
ICANN Compliance has used breach of the Registrar Information Specification (RIS), which requires publication of certain officer information on a registrar’s website, as the primary and secondary reason for several breaches. The registrar DropLabel was terminated in 2015, in part because of “failure to publish the full name and position of all officers of the registrar on DropLabel’s website”.
“In part”, yes.
Interesting one.
It is interesting that in the USA you can have a number of companies under identical name, if these are in different states..
Had a quick look:
Epik Inc (Utah (US))
Epik Inc (California (US))
EPIK Inc (Colorado (US))
EPIK INC. (Washington (US))
Getting to know could be really easy for ICANN if they wished for this > they just need to say that they need to re-sign existing agreements/contracts with the current board or these will be suspended until this simple formality.
Why all this clownade?
.. don’t know anything of Epik, though.. if everything is ‘kosher’ – let every good and honest business prosper.
Best! H