Realcent.org

ICANN's new "Whois Accuracy Data Specification" can knock your entire domain
name offline if you don't respond to certain administration messages within a
15 day period. If knocked offline it can take up to 48 hours to get it restored.
This isn't just the web site but also any E-mail or other services that depend
on your domain name to run.

My DNS provider has some information about it posted:

http://blog.easydns.org/2014/01/21/ican ... r-of-2014/

http://blog.easydns.org/2015/05/20/unfo ... editation/

As registrar agreements are renewed eventually all registrars will be affected
by this.

I am unsure whether this only affects generic TLDs or if it will also impact
country code TLDs as well. (I have posted a question about that on the most
recent of those 2 links that is awaiting blog moderation and response.)

If country code TLDs are unaffected it may make a ccTLD a better choice for
new domain names going forward. Of course for existing names you'll still
have to deal with one more maintenance issue.

Just one more thing to make the internet less reliable... -_-

A little follow up on this, my DNS provider has put up their FAQ about this issue:

https://fusion.easydns.com/index.php?/K ... rogram-wap

The FAQ wrote:The WAP applies to "generic Top Level Domains" (gTLDs) only.

This includes "legacy" gTLDs such as: .COM .NET .ORG .BIZ .INFO

It includes new gTLDs such as: .SUPPORT .EMAIL .SYSTEMS .FINANCIAL .GURU .XYZ .WTF et al

It does not apply to country code TLDs (ccTLDs) such as: .CA .DE .CC .TV .FR .US et al

Please note: some ccTLDs have their own Whois verification requirements. .CA is already subject to Canadian Presence Requirements (CPR) and .UK recently enacted a policy similar to, and in some ways more stringent than, the WAP.

So going forward anyone thinking about getting a new domain name may want to look at
the advantages of going with a ccTLD (which for most on this board will be .us or .ca) rather
than a generic TLD if a suitable name is available in your ccTLD. Of course for all those
domain names that are you already depend on you'll just have to be more vigilant watching
for E-mails about it.

Looks like they are cleaning up dormant domain names.

Mossy wrote:Looks like they are cleaning up dormant domain names.

If it was just dormant ones that would be cleaned up by eventual failure to renew.
I'm not aware of a TLD available to the public that doesn't require you to renew
yearly or it gets released for someone else to register. Granted you can pre-pay
multiple years but unless someone is shelling out money it doesn't keep running
forever.

Now legacy IPv4 space and legacy Autonomous System numbers that were issued
prior to the current RIR system and never had a LRSA signed stay registered to
the organization that they were originally issued to by default without them having
to do anything or shell out an annual payment so there is a fair bit of "dormancy"
with internet numbering resources but on the name space side that doesn't happen.

There is basically nothing like a "legacy domain name" that is for life/eternity/
however long the internet exists.