March 8, 2007 – (HOSTSEARCH.COM) – Netcraft has reported that the RegisterFly website, http://www.registefly.com, has gone offline. The ICANN registrar has for some weeks been the center of controversy and speculation on whether it had actually gone out of business. The speculation followed countless reports of domain name owners being unable to manage or transfer domains.
The current downtime follows ICANN’s submission to a court in California, USA, asking for RegisterFly to be forced to hand over its domain database and to submit to a full audit. Netcraft reported ICANN’s blog as suggesting, "Last Friday, ICANN convened a telephone conference among those needed to implement a plan that will help cease unintended deletions. This will prevent names from being deleted from the registry and becoming available for re-registration by others."
The news of RegisterFly’s website downtime comes after it recently filed a suit against former CEO Kevin Medina. The company was seeking damages for 75,000 lost domain names and suggested Mr. Medina had misappropriated corporate funds to the tune of “tens of thousands of dollars”. According to the company, this resulted in it being unable to cover registry fees. Some 900,000 Registerfly customers have been trying to reacquire rights over names that have not been renewed, despite being paid for.
