First deadbeat dot-brand ripped from the root
ICANN has terminated a dot-brand gTLD contract for non-payment of fees for the first time.
The unlucky recipient of the termination notice is aigo, a privately held Chinese consumer electronics manufacturer.
ICANN first hit the company with a breach of contract notice in March 2018, noting its non-payment and a litany of other infractions.
The two parties have been in mediation and arbitration ever since, but the arbitrator found aigo was in fact in breach in late May.
ICANN issued its termination notice June 25 and IANA yanked .aigo from the DNS root servers a couple of days later.
While aigo is not the first dot-brand registry to be hit with a non-payment breach notice, it is the first to have it escalated all the way to involuntary termination.
Also recently, .intel and .metlife — run by the chipmaker and insurance company respectively — both decided to voluntarily their dot-brand registry agreements.
The total number of voluntary terminations is now 78.
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