Reglikedomain industry desk

Day Transfer Lock Closer to Termination — GoDaddy’s 60

Day Transfer Lock Closer to Termination — GoDaddy’s 60

GNSO Council approves changes to domain transfer blocks.

One of GoDaddy’s most complained regarding policies is that it blocks transfers of domain names that have had certain changes to their whois information within the past 60 days.

In September 2007 ICANN began working on an advisory that targeted transfer blocks like this. Following ICANN finalized its advisory this past April I was happy to note that GoDaddy appeared to be allowing transfers even if changes were made to the whois information.

Alas, other people have told me they still get transfers blocked at GoDaddy. I tested it today and found that if you make any changes to the registrant name or organization name, GoDaddy indeed requires you to agree to a 60 day lock:

For security purposes I authorize the rejection of all transfer requests for all selected domain names for a period of 60 days from the date of this Registrant Name Change. I have read the Domain Name Change Registrant Agreement and agree to its terms for all selected domain names.

When I asked GoDaddy Vice President of Corporate Development & Policy Tim Ruiz regarding this in April, he stated in a statement “Go Daddy always has and will continue to comply with ICANN rules and regulations.”

Ruiz told the truth but dodged the question. Technically the 60 day lock issue isn’t an ICANN “rule” or “regulation”. Yet. It was an advisory that had a couple more steps to go. There was a comment period and then a couple changes to how it was written, and today the GNSO Council voted to approve the changes. Now it’s hopefully off to the board for approval and then implementation. In a perfect world it is only a few more months ahead of the rule change is fully implemented.

One person helping to push through the changes is Internet Commerce Association Executive Director Michael Collins.

So the writing is on the wall for the transfer policy at GoDaddy. It’s just taking a bit longer than domain owners would like.

Also on the wire

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