HEXONET temporarily disables new registrations and transfers for AdamsNames TLDS .GD, .TC and .VG

HEXONET has temporarily disabled new registrations and domain transfers of the AdamsNames ccTLDs “.GD”, “.TC” and “.VG”.  Due to unprecedented circumstances explained below, this action is required until further notice.

HEXONET Registrar Statement:

1.    As many of our customers know, AdamsNames switched hands in August of 2012 to new owners.  With the transition, the new owners temporarily disabled .TC registrations to change pricing, as well as, introduce premium .TC domains.  Please note that prior to this change-over, AdamsNames had been running extremely smoothly without any hiccups (big thanks to one of the former owners Martin Oldfield)

2.    On Friday, March 8th, 2013, HEXONET received a notice from AdamsNames (Party A), that they had introduced enhancements to the registry with additional features.

3.    Also on Friday, March 8th, 2013, HEXONET received new login credentials from the Registry (Party A).  Though receiving new credentials was a little strange, HEXONET didn’t think much of it since many ccTLDs (country-code Top-Level-Domains) tend to operate differently than gTLDs (generic Top-Level-Domains).  As any registrar would attest, short notices like the above are very much disliked, but do happen from time to time.

4.    On the next day, Saturday, March 9th, 2013, HEXONET looked at the new registry and started migrating all our data over to a new platform (thanks to our engineering team for working on a Saturday) to quickly get our customers access to their AdamNames domains (register, renew, transfer and modify). Strangely, when starting on the new platform, HEXONET noticed that the platform was now on CoCCa.  HEXONET being very familiar with the CoCCa Platform the migration was completed swiftly and without much downtime.  Please note that at this point in time, HEXONET was only aware of one party representing themselves as the AdamsNames operator and no other.

5.    Then in the late afternoon on Sunday, March 10th, 2013, HEXONET received an email from the Legal Department of AdamsNames (now a second party, Party B), notifying us of important information relating to our access data.  The notice stated that the registry was experiencing connectivity problems due to a hostile attack and as such had created new registry accesses for its registrars (confused yet? So were we).

6.    With two parties (Party A and Party B) now claiming control of the registry, HEXONET needed to quickly identify who the authoritative registry operator was so that we could continue to process updates, renewals, new registrations, …etc on behalf of our customers.  To do this HEXONET sent an update command on one of our own domains.  Party A was able to process the update and the domain resolved shortly thereafter, which definitively showed that Party A had control over the Primary NameServers required to manage a TLD (Top-Level-Domain) at IANA (iana.org).

7.    Though there is a legal battle between the two parties for the registry today, HEXONET has always been committed to our customers first and foremost.  And for us, what matters most is that customers and registrants have legal certainty of the ownership and resolution of their domains.  Unfortunately, the legal battle and its effect on registrars has not been mentioned in the public statements.

8.    Apparently, both parties are now in a legal battle for control over the registry, which should have been handled behind closed doors and not in the public.  Hopefully an outcome will soon be determined to the satisfaction of registrants and registrars.

Due to the unique and unprecedented circumstances, HEXONET has no choice, but to temporarily disable all new registrations and domain transfers of AdamsNames TLDs until further notice.  During this period, we will attempt to process domain renewals at both parties to ensure that whoever wins their legal battle will have transactional renewal records from HEXONET.  Again, HEXONET is carefully proceeding to ensure that our customers and resellers are not affected no matter the legal outcome of the two parties.

For the record, HEXONET had no involvement or influence of these events at the AdamNames registry, other than comply and operate as a registrar should when given direction from a registry.  HEXONET does not run a registry or even want to run a registry, our goal is to only be a registrar and we strive daily to be one of the best registrars around.

Thank you very much for your understanding and support of our decision.