Originally Posted by BRISK

ICANN's new policy:

In an effort to streamline the domain transfer process, ICANN is imposing new regulations as of November 12, 2004. Section 3 details when and how registrars must handle transfer requests:

"Failure by the Registrar of Record to respond within five (5) calendar days to a notification from the Registry regarding a transfer request will result in a default "approval" of the transfer.

In the event that a Transfer Contact listed in the Whois has not confirmed their request to transfer with the Registrar of Record and the Registrar of Record has not explicitly denied the transfer request, the default action will be that the Registrar of Record must allow the transfer to proceed. "
In non-bureaucratic language, this means that anyone can transfer your domain name to a new registrar and change the contact and nameserver information if you fail to respond to the transfer notification within 5 calendar days (not working days!).

This completely changes the previous system, whereby the transfer was denied if the owner failed to respond.