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stupid.domain.name owner fights Verisign turn-off

Kevin Murphy, September 14, 2026, 09:03:45 (UTC), Domain Registries

The registrant of the domain name stupid.domain.name has become the second person to formally complain to ICANN about Verisign’s plan to delete his domain.

Patrik Fältström has filed a Request for Reconsideration, asking ICANN to reverse its decision to allow Verisign to shut down several services associated with its .name gTLD.

As I first reported back in May, Verisign wants to simplify .name by retiring its legacy three-level structure. This would mean about 22,000 domains and email addresses, many of which have been registered for decades, will be unceremoniously deleted.

Verisign asked ICANN for permission to do this via a Registry Services Evaluation Request, which ICANN approved in July. Verisign said that hardly any of the third-level domains are still in use.

But Fältström says he registered stupid.domain.name in August 2001 and still uses it today. His RfR says:

If the approved change is implemented, my registration will be terminated even if I want to continue renewing it. I cannot move stupid.domain.name to another registry operator, and I cannot solve the problem by changing registrar. The domain name will simply no longer be registered to me.

That is different from Verisign deciding not to accept new third-level registrations. I have no objection to Verisign stopping new registrations. I do object to the termination of domain names that are already registered and in use.

He’s the second affected registrant to file an RfR since Verisign’s RSEP was approved. Doytchin Spiridonov of Bulgarian registrar Dom.bg filed one in July, saying he would lose three .name domains that he still uses.

But it looks set to be rejected on procedural grounds, following reports from the Board Accountability Mechanisms Committee and the ICANN Ombuds, both of which confirmed that ICANN was well aware that 22,000 domains would be deleted but allowed Verisign to go ahead anyway.

The Ombuds noted, in essence, that this might be a pretty crappy customer service experience but it does not rise to the level of a significant security and stability or competition issue.

The full board of directors has yet to rubber-stamp BAMC’s ruling. It seems likely Fältström’s RfR will be addressed simultaneously.

And Fältström is not just some rando with a grievance. He’s head of security at Swedish registry back-end Netnod and he’s been deeply involved in the technical side of ICANN’s community since the very beginning, including a stint as chair of the influential Security and Stability Advisory Committee. He’s a member of the Internet Society’s Hall of Fame.

So when he points out in his RfR that, yes, unilaterally turning off somebody’s 25-year-old domain and potentially reselling it to somebody else does cause security concerns, he’s not just grasping at straws.

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