Experience with Fighting Domain Farming 259
Lost_my_regs writes "I had a .com domain name relevant only to me, no legal trademark, registered and hosted at a provider that went bust. When attempting to re-host the domain I discovered, to my unpleasant surprise, that the domain is now registered by a domain farming company (name removed). My question is: Is there any way to claim back my domain?"
Ask nicely (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Buy it (Score:3, Insightful)
Keep Offering (Score:3, Insightful)
In future use the trade mark rules (Score:5, Insightful)
The domain now has no value to another as they cannot use or sell it without violating the trademark. You also have a much stronger position in the various appeal processes.
Re:Buy it (Score:2, Insightful)
No, go lower on the counter offer. (Score:5, Insightful)
I would say start lowering it. They come back with $5,000: come back with $50.
Those people are out for easy money. Easy money should be peanuts or less.
Be prepared to walk so that they'll lose and they'll lose because the domain name is only good to the person who's responsible for this article. Meaning, after they're registration time is up, they'll abandon it themselves. Paying them is to only get it back sooner.
Buy domains directly from registrars (Score:3, Insightful)
Things like this are why all the domains I've bought in the past have been bought directly from a Registrar.
Hosts going out of business is not the only danger with domains. There's also the practice of hosts keeping the domain if you ever choose to switch hosts.
As for registrars, the only advice I can give is to avoid GoDaddy [slashdot.org], as they cave to big corporate interests.
Re:No, go lower on the counter offer. (Score:3, Insightful)
How it happened makes a huge difference (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait! Patience! They may be a "taster".. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait. Don't contact them. Don't make any waves.
Often - very often - a domain farmer picks up the domain for just a week or so (no matter how long the WHOIS says it's really registered for) - and waits to see if the pay-per-click ads generate enough revenue to make it worth keeping. So often the best thing you can do is...nothing. Don't visit the site (generates traffic), don't contact them (tells them they have a chance of milking you for $), don't do anything - just sit and wait. Often the name will get dropped and another farmer will pick it up immediately - but if you're patient and check back in with the WHOIS, you should eventually see it free again for long enough to grab it.
This may sound ridiculous, but it's how the domain name economy is currently working, courtesy of weak ICAAN rules. Make it work in your favor - you want that one name, but they want 100,000 that generate enough revenue to make up the low ($3.50/year? can't remember) ICAAN fees necessary to hold on to it. (They know WIPO arbitration is going to cost you $1500+legal fees, so in that route the numbers are on their side.)
This has worked with the .com versions of two different domain names held by non-profit clients of mine just this year. Good luck.
Re:In a word, no (Score:2, Insightful)
If the registrar was ICANN certified, the domain registration should have reverted to ICANN or another ICANN provider when the company went bust. If the company was a subsidiary of another, the registration reverts to the parent. You do not lose the registration, you just get moved to a different registrar (though there can be some period of time while it all gets worked out). Sounds to me like you failed to follow the transfer or failed to pay when it came time to renew. Perhaps your spam filter shitcanned their instructions on how to start using the new registrar.
The relevant ICANN policy
SLD is second level domain.
ICANN policy [icann.org]
Re:In a word, no (Score:3, Insightful)
If people don't read AC posts that's their own problem. Read at -1, Nested!
Re:No, go lower on the counter offer. (Score:2, Insightful)
Believe it or not, those people are human beings too.
That is unlikely. The kind of creature who does this, knowing that they will at best be taking advantage of another party's reputation and at worst actively damaging them to make a profit, is probably a lower life form. Even if their actions are technically legal and, at least for now, permitted by the domain registration authorities, those actions are still unethical at best. In other contexts, analogous behaviour would be bordering on criminal.
Re: (name removed) (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No, go lower on the counter offer. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Please Clarify (Score:2, Insightful)
That would depend on the agreement between customer and ISP. I.E. Whether the agreement b/w ISP and customer states that the domain belongs to the ISP or the customer.
Or whether the ISP is merely acting as an agent or bailee of the customer in registering and managing the domain on their behalf.
I guess if the ISP has already been liquidated; the time for the customer to file any necessary legal paperwork to claim THEIR property in possession by the company being liquidated has probably come and passed.
Re:Wait! Patience! They may be a "taster".. (Score:5, Insightful)
I was able to pick up a domain that I wanted this way recently. I knew that the domain would not be renewed (defunct company) so I put an order into goDaddy's domain backordering service. Someone else snagged the domain, but after a week, it was available again and I got it.
This works because of a huge hole in the registering process -- the registrars have 1 week to pay the fee or give up the domain. Thus a registrar can "test-drive" a domain for a week. If ICANN got rid of this ability to return the domain without payment it would go a long way towards removing registration abuses.
Re:Ask nicely (Score:4, Insightful)
Real Estate - you can buy it, improve it, sell it on to someone who is unable to improve it themselves
Stocks - you buy it and a company gets an investment to spend and improve their business
Gold - meh, we don't need it, everything is based on 1s and 0s. No-one misses it if you 'buy' some and it remains sitting in some bank vault somewhere
Coins/stamps - Millions of almost identical ones. To most people they don't have much value or use.
Art - it was designed to be collected and displayed
Domains - squatters (which is what they are) don't improve it after they buy it. In real estate terms they leave it to rot with minimal attention and invest nothing in it. In terms of stock then no-one (except the registrar) sees the benefit of an investment, and they're getting bulk purchasing so it isn't as much as it could be. In terms of gold then people actually need domain names, since the only other alternative is IP addresses and folders that aren't portable. In terms of coins and stamps then each is unique and they have value to the masses that want to visit. In terms of art then they were created to access a website, not a load of adverts, and they certainly weren't designed to be collected.
So I think there might be one or two differences there.
Re:One way to get it back.... (Score:2, Insightful)
The new owner should have thrown the letter into the recycle bin, as your friend knew that not paying would cause her domain to be released for re-registration.
I don't like domain squatters any more than you do, but I like "look at me, ME ME ME ME FIRST!" I'm-entitled-to-everything jerks even less.
Re:In a word, no (Score:5, Insightful)
Take GoDaddy.com, a domain registrar who fairly often blackmails their customers for hundreds of dollars on domains they keep that should have been allowed to expire and been available publicly again. ICANN should warn them, and revoke their license if they continue in anti-trust behavior. It shouldn't be allowed in the first place, I'm saying, and ICANN should make sure it doesn't happen secondly.
Of course 'the market' should stop going to GoDaddy and thus 'the market' should decide, but that shouldn't prevent ICANN from implementing something effective to stop problems at the source.
Registrars in the habit of making you check a box agreeing to a service arrangement with a clause basically giving them power of attorney 'on your behalf' should find in court that such a clause, at least, is void. Likewise, GoDaddy's clause that they will keep a domain you do not renew 'on your behalf' but ask for exorbitant fees for doing so should been seen for what it is.
And if GoDaddy was forced to release expired domains back into the public pool there would still be this problem of domain snipers picking up the domain from the public pool to do that same exact thing. Just because someone else will do it doesn't mean GoDaddy should be allowed to. I do wonder how one could demonstrate that domain squatting is what is occurring without squatters finding a loop-hole or way to appear legit, or otherwise what rule would help solve this problem, but that doesn't mean none exist.
You YELL that we don't need more rules and regulations, but the majority of domains registered today are squatted hoping to make money on advertising from inadvertent visitors or selling the domain to someone who wants to use it, actually, for real. This is a shit-situation that should be counter-acted.
If you let your domain expire, it should go back to being available to the public. The fact that it doesn't go back into the public pool makes me sick, and more-over hurts the public while being illegit. Half of the domains I want to register have place-holder pages as they wait to ask hundreds of percent of the registration cost for the domains use. That fact indicates their is something broken with the domain name marketing system.
The stock markets may be much more detrimental and there are probably some larger issues there, but they do occasionally convict for insider trading, and ICANN should take a tip from that and not allow domain sniping. If you know that someone is potentially interested in a domain available to the public and you go and register that name in order to get that person or entity to buy it from you, that's wrong and should be illegal. What reason do you have for saying we shouldn't have a process for resolving the illegitimacy of that action?
As for all the squatters betting on domain names that have general appeal, it's true that this is just as illegitimate, but at least it doesn't target individual persons or entities. I'm not convinced that you should be able to hold on to a domain name (reserve it) for longer than a year without having a particular use for it. This is a less black-and-white situation though.
It's true that we've heard horror stories from the days of supposed trademark holders taking away legit domains from legitimate domain holders - let's learn for those lessons, and from lessons of today, and create namespaces (fix the ones we've got) that have more common sense and repel more detrimental registrations...
Re:Ask nicely (Score:3, Insightful)
Or, you can hold on to it, prevent it from being used by anyone else [aol.com] in the hopes that its value will appreciate or that you will gain some indirect benefits.
Stocks - you buy it and a company gets an investment to spend and improve their business
A publicly-owned corporation does not benefit directly from the machinations of the stock market. When you buy a stock (except in the case of an IPO or reissue), you do not enrich the company.
Gold - meh, we don't need it, everything is based on 1s and 0s. No-one misses it if you 'buy' some and it remains sitting in some bank vault somewhere
You don't need it, maybe. But millions are made on precious metal speculation, so someone is benefiting..
Coins/stamps - Millions of almost identical ones. To most people they don't have much value or use.
Just as a personal domain name doesn't have much use for most people (other than perhaps the domain owner)?
Art - it was designed to be collected and displayed
Really? Care to provide a resource for this?
Domains - squatters (which is what they are) don't improve it after they buy it. In real estate terms they leave it to rot with minimal attention and invest nothing in it
It doesn't appear your arguments support your conclusion. Please try again, and this time let's not engage in slashthink.