Summary

  • The June 2000 agreement split existing .ca registrations into two paths. “All other” registrations would expire unless their holders applied through a CIRA-certified registrar for the same name and accepted new agreements before the Grace Period ended.
  • CIRA was to build its new registry from information supplied directly by registrants; UBC’s old database could be used to compare and verify those submissions, while CIRA carried its own rights and privacy diligence.

Analysis

A .ca registration could be older than the operator that held it and still fail to cross a handover automatically. The June 2000 CIRA–UBC agreement gave one legacy group a direct condition: submit the same name again through a CIRA-certified registrar before the Grace Period ended, or the existing registration would expire. This was not a rule for every old name. It was a deadline attached to a particular cohort.

The agreement drew the line by payment date. UBC could charge for registrations from 1 May 2000 onward. For those it had charged, the holder had to accept CIRA’s standard click-wrap agreement during the Grace Period and sign an agreement with UBC or another registrar. CIRA would take the registration if that registrar qualified for certification and signed CIRA’s registrar contract. The other group faced the sharper instruction: apply to pre-register the same .ca name, then accept both agreements before the deadline. A registry transfer had acquired a customer-facing step.

That requirement arrived as .ca was being redesigned around competitive registrars. Community discussions had started in 1997; after public consultation, the Canadian Domain Name Consultative Committee recommended a not-for-profit administrator. CIRA was incorporated in December 1998 and recognized by the Government of Canada in March 1999. The change widened the service route from a volunteer-run registry to a system in which certified registrars handled requests.

The scale deserves its own line. IANA counted about 120,000 names under .ca on 30 November 2000, after nearly a decade of volunteer operation. That is the whole namespace at that date, not the size of the group facing a new application. Neither the Transition Agreement nor IANA’s report gives the size of that cohort or the final number re-registered versus expired; those totals would change how much continuity work the clause imposed in practice.

CIRA was not to turn UBC’s file into a new registry by copying it wholesale. Section 4 directed CIRA to collect information from registrants and allowed the old database during the Grace Period for comparison and verification only. Section 5 made the transfer’s limits blunt: UBC offered no warranty about the database or CIRA’s right to use it, and CIRA had to do its own due diligence, including on privacy. Database rights transferred on the Operational Transfer Date, with a license back to UBC.

CIRA’s Canadian Presence Requirements began in November 2000 and were broader than UBC’s earlier rules. Its current policy says existing UBC registrants were treated as meeting those requirements when applying to re-register. The eligibility hurdle was softened for the legacy group; the application itself was not.

December 1 is the date the registry’s control changed. For one group of old registrations, continuity had a second address: the registrant’s application through a certified registrar. The handover could close at the institutional level only after the name had been carried through that customer-facing gate.

Sources