What the hell is wrong with ICANN?
 

http://www.icann.org/announcements/a...nt-12nov04.htm

Oooookay, so, in other words, some anonymous person can just transfer your domain away from you as long as you don't decline it?

I have a hard time believing this... that would be like the FDIC saying, "We'll give your money to whoever requests it as long as you don't deline the transfer request." How ridiculous...

Or am I misunderstanding this? My friends and I are discussing it right now and this didn't sound quite right to me... this creates infinitely more problems than it solves if this is indeed how it works.

If there's someone I really hated or wanted to fuck with, I could just transfer their domain away, and if for some reason they don't get the trasnfer request, it's all mine?

Seems like there's gonna be a LOT of legal issues surrounding this one...

I could be reading this wrong, but it looks to me like you can put a "lock" on your domain so this doesn't happen.

Yeah, I think pretty much every registrar is offering a lock of sorts, but what if someone didn't know about it?

It just seems wrong to allow this type of thing. It's like they're sacrificing privacy for convenience so one doesn't have to double-confirm such a transaction.

I'd rather double-confirm as opposed to being in a potential situation where someone can just swipe my domain from me.

I think they did this to stop dishonest registrars from refusing to release domains to their rightful owners.

That's exactly it. However, what if that company still has the 'lock' status? They can very well have your domain locked, and disallow you from changing it. Some of the more shady registrars don't have customer logins.

On a related note, the company I work for sent out a mass mailing about this...the only problem with this is they register more than the typical US domain name (.net, .com, etc) which are the ones ICANN is referring to...so many confused customers.

ICANN has always been a bit of a lightning rod for domain registrars, and this announcement has cuased yet more ripples.

I still think that it would be unlikely that someone would be able to poach your domain name, especially if you are doing business under that name.

also, as already stated, there are limited domains that are effected by this policy. Still, the best thing you can do is contact your regsitrar and ensure that your domain will, under no circumstances, be transferred without your expressed consent. If they refuse to gaurantee this, transfer the domain yourself to a registrar that will do this for you, and they are out there.

Due diligence.

Peace,

Pierre