LA wildfire victims get domain deletes delay
Victims of the recent wildfires in the Los Angeles area have been offered special relief from renewing their expiring domains, according to an ICANN note to registrars.
Registrars were told last week that they “will be permitted to temporarily forebear from canceling domain registrations that are unable to be renewed because of the impact of the fires in Los Angeles, California, on domain name registrants.”
The LA fires reportedly destroyed or damaged 18,000 buildings, killed 29 people, and turned 200,000 into evacuees.
The Registrar Accreditation Agreement gives ICANN the discretion to allow its registrars to keep domains alive beyond their usual lifespan due to “extenuating circumstances”.
That’s been taken to mean natural disasters including hurricanes Maria, Helene and Milton, the earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria in 2023, the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The idea is to help victims of disasters keep their domains — and therefore often their livelihoods — after the usual renewal date if their credit cards are buried under a pile of rubble and they have more important things on their minds.
Los Angeles is the home of ICANN’s corporate headquarters.
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Who determines this relief? Is it applied by Registrants or Registrars or does ICANN simply arbitrarily decide what determines “extenuating circumstances”? From the outside looking in this seems to be severely lacking process and therefore transparency.