CYBERSPACE — In a statement released Friday, ICANN announced that it has issued a formal notice of termination of RegisterFly.com’s Registration Accreditation Agreement (RAA), and sent a letter to RegisterFly informing the company that “it will cease operating as an ICANN-Accredited Registrar on March 31, 2007.”“Terminating accreditation is the strongest measure ICANN is able to take against RegisterFly under its powers,” said Dr. Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN in the written statement released Friday.

Twomey said that ICANN “has been frustrated and distressed by recent management confusion inside RegisterFly.”

“I completely understand the greater frustration and enormous difficulty that this has created for registrants,” added Twomey.

In a statement released by ICANN on March 8th, ICANN acknowledged that a U.S. District Court in New Jersey had awarded RegisterFly CEO Kevin Medina control of RegisterFly, Inc., but cautioned that resolution of the company’s ownership dispute “does not alter RegisterFly obligations to immediately cure the breaches of the Registration Accreditation Agreement, as noticed by ICANN.”

The March 8th ICANN statement specifies that RegisterFly’s breaches of the RAA included complaints from registrants that were unable to transfer their domain registrations to another registrant.

In its March 8the statement, ICANN noted that the domain oversight agency “has demanded that RegisterFly immediately act to provide authorization codes and has also demanded a meeting with RegisterFly (and other relevant parties that are assisting ICANN) to resolve RegisterFly’s reported failures. We will provide an update on the outcome of this meeting.”

No such post-meeting “update” has been posted to the ICANN website; the next entry relevant to RegisterFly is Friday’s announcement that the company’s RAA has been terminated.

In a letter to Medina, ICANN General Counsel and Secretary John O. Jeffrey states that “ResterFly’s 15 working days to cure has expired,” noting that in a February 21st notice of breach of the RAA, ICANN warned that if RegisterFly did not cure each identified breach within 15 days, ICANN “may provide notice of and terminate the RAA.”

Jeffrey’s letter cites specific breaches of the RAA that RegisterFly had failed to address, and notes that the company also “failed to comply with ICANN’s repeated audit demands within the time frames reasonably set by ICANN.”

“Accordingly, effective 31 March 2007, RegisterFly will no longer be allowed to operate as an ICANN-Accredited Registrar,” continues the letter. “Between now and 31 March, under the RAA and the Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy, RegisterFly is required to unlock and provide all necessary AuthInfo Codes to allow for domain name transfers to occur.”

The letter to Medina also states that “Any and all registrants wishing to transfer from RegisterFly during this period should be allowed to do so and the transfer must be performed expeditiously.”

Jeffrey adds that under the RAA and ICANN’s Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy, upon termination of the RegisterFly RAA, ICANN “may approve a bulk transfer of all current RegisterFly domain names to an ICANN-Accredited Registrar if ICANN deems doing so will promote the community interests.”

In the statement released Friday, Twomey said that there’s no reason why RegisterFly should wait until the end of the month to act on a bulk transfer of domain names.

“Of course, RegisterFly does not have to wait till then,” Twomey said. “They can request ICANN to approve a bulk transfer immediately. I call on RegisterFly to act in the interests of registrants and seek such a transfer from us straight away.”

For more information on the termination of RegisterFly’s RAA, refer to the ICANN March 16 statement, posted here: http://icann.org/announcements/announcement-2-16mar07.htm

For the full text of ICANN General Counsel John O. Jeffrey to RegisterFly Owner/CEO Kevin Medina, go to: http://icann.org/correspondence/jeffrey-to-medina-16mar07.pdf