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Four registrars terminated

Kevin Murphy, June 3, 2013, Domain Registrars

Four small domain name registrars have lost their ICANN accreditation and their domain names have been transferred to another.
ICANN announced on Friday that US-based C I Host and Central Registrar (Domainmonger.com), along with Panama-based Power Brand Center have all been terminated for non-compliance.
Breach notices had been sent earlier this year covering everything from broken Whois to a failure to cooperate with audits.
Dotted Ventures, also American, had allowed its accreditation to lapse in March. It had, however, also been sent a breach notice for non-payment of ICANN fees in April.
The gTLD domains they managed, which amount to between a couple of hundred and a couple of thousand each, have all been transferred to UK-based Astutium, which isn’t much bigger.
Customers of each terminated registrar will receive notices from Astutium instructing them how to proceed, ICANN said. There shouldn’t be a cost to transfer, so any request for cash may be a phishing attack.

ICANN terminates three registrars

Kevin Murphy, February 12, 2013, Domain Registrars

ICANN has pulled the plug on three accredited domain name registrars, saying they all failed to comply with an audit.
Lime Labs, R Lee Chambers Company (DomainsToBeSeen.com) and Central Registrar (Domainmonger.com) have been given 30 days notice that their accreditations are being yanked and that their domains will be transferred to other registrars.
About 12,000 domains will be affected, the vast majority of which are managed by Lime Labs.
The three registrars were among 10 that ICANN pounced on last month when they failed to respond to its Contractual Compliance Audit Program.
This program is a three-year initiative to make sure registrars and registries are complying with their contractual requirements. A third of registrars were randomly selected to take part late last year.
According to ICANN’s termination notices, all three registrars ignored last month’s warnings and did not submit the data required for the audit.
DomainsToBeSeen and Domainmonger both have just a few hundred gTLD domain names under management each. Lime Labs is much larger, with over 11,000.
The terminations will come into affect March 13.