ICANN is introduced changes to the Transfer Policy on December 1, 2016, which will regulate how Ownership Changes can be processed for generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs). The current ICANN Transfer Policy only covers domain transfers between registrars but as of December 1, the new Transfer Policy will also cover Ownership Changes. An Ownership Change (OC) is the process of changing the current Registrant of a gTLD domain to a new Registrant.
Once the policy is in effect, the impact on you and your end users will be as follows.
- Any changes to first name, last name, organization or email address fields for the Registrant of any gTLD domain name will now start an OC process
- The process involves obtaining explicit confirmation from both the current and the new Registrants before a change can be completed
- After a change of Registrant has been completed, the Old and New Registrants must receive notifications about the change, with no option of reversing the change
- After a change of Registrant has been completed, the domain is by default locked against transfers to a new registrar for the following 60 days
EPAG is implementing this policy in a way that meets policy terms and withstands an ICANN audit but still minimizes the actual negative impacts for resellers and end-users. To do so, we are leveraging policy options such as the “Designated Agent” or transfer-lock opt-outs to streamline the process and reduce impact on you and the Registrant as much as possible.
For detailed information regarding the new Transfer and OC procedures, please read the below Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) document.
