What Should Happen To Expired Domains?

jathos asks: "It looks like Network Solutions is now refusing to release 'expired' domains back into the public domain. I've personally seen domains that have been expired for more than a month, yet NSI still insists that they are 'taken.' E-mail messages sent to NSI's tech support has incurred legalese responses basically telling me that I have no right to inquire about someone else's domain. Isn't it NSI's responsibility to release these names back into the public domain? Isn't it a violation of their charter if they do not? Furthermore, could they be holding back these domain names because they want to keep revenue from the other registrars (addition by subtraction)? See this message thread for more opinions." Expired domains really should be removed from the databases of registrars upon expiration. NSI does no one a service (except, themselves of course) by holding on to them. Since they now claim to 'own' all of the domains that are registered with them, what can one do?

A good example of why expired domains should be allowed back into the pool comes in the form of another question from Jonathan Mendelson: "I was recently searching to see if mendelson.net was available, and it surprised me to see that Network Solutions was holding it. I used the whois function to find out more, and I saw that their record expired on Nov. 14, 1999. This makes it appear that they are holding the domain illegally. Are they allowed to do this, and if not, is there any action that I can take to prevent them doing so? Is there any particular reason that they might be holding it, and might there be other domains with which they are doing the same?"

Of course, an answer (in the form of another question, obviously) might be found in this bit from conf00sledBynsi who asks:

"There is a domain name I am interested in, which is not being used. It was originally registered in March of 1988, and has not been reregistered, so it has 'lapsed' for over three months, but Network Solutions has not released it for re-registration yet. After a couple of emails to Network Solutions, I received the following reply:

---------------------

Thank you for contacting Network Solutions.

The expiration date that shows in WHOIS is not the date that a domain name becomes available to be registered by another party.

The expiration date appears in the WHOIS database so that the registrant may be able to verify how long they have locked in there domain name registration.

The registrant still has until the end of the billing cycle before the domain name is deleted, and released to be registered by the public.

We do not release the date a domain name will be deleted from our database to third parties. Please continue to check the availability of the domain name on a day to day basis. As long as it is registered our system will not allow you to register the name. Once it is deleted, the name is able to be registered on a first come first serve basis.

There are no waiting list for domain name registrations.

--------------------------

Does anybody know how long their 'billing cycle' is, or what their algorithm is for determining when to release a domain name? For that matter, has anybody figured out their algorithm for when, exactly, during a particular day the database is updated?"

Could it be, that by arbitrarily defining their "billing cycle" NSI is able to hold on to domains that have been expired for years. I would think that your normal business cycle is measured in months so this seems rather fishy to me. Might NSI be squatting on their own domains?

Comments

Replacing them isn't the solution

[Chairboy]

As I understand it, it's not a matter of 'replacing' NSI, it's a matter of only doing business with the competing registrars as a protest to NSI's monopolistic practices.

Network Solutions is abusing their unique position of power, first by claiming to own all domain names, and second by this fiasco.

"DOJ, you've just gotten MS ordered broken up. How are you going to celebrate?"

"I'm going to Disneyland, then I'm cracking heads at Network Solutions!"

Very Expired domains

[Anonymous Coward]

ffh.com :01-Feb-2000
ilt.com :01-Feb-2000
bjr.com :03-Feb-2000
gxm.com :09-Feb-2000
fjn.com :11-Feb-2000
ehk.com :12-Feb-2000
fqq.com :15-Feb-2000
icy.com :15-Feb-2000
jmx.com :19-Feb-2000
eak.com :20-Feb-2000
hbw.com :20-Feb-2000
hjj.com :20-Feb-2000
kdj.com :20-Feb-2000
mmb.com :20-Feb-2000
m2g.com :21-Feb-2000
kye.com :21-Feb-2000
bwv.com :21-Feb-2000
jbb.com :21-Feb-2000
elc.com :21-Feb-2000
fqs.com :21-Feb-2000
haj.com :21-Feb-2000
ezv.com :21-Feb-2000
ghv.com :21-Feb-2000
mws.com :21-Feb-2000
ecm.com :22-Feb-2000
fcc.com :22-Feb-2000
ght.com :23-Feb-2000
klp.com :24-Feb-2000
iny.com :25-Feb-2000
iis.com :25-Feb-2000
epi.com :26-Feb-2000
fbc.com :27-Feb-2000

nsi is evil

[Phexro]

this only furthers my opinion that nsi is evil.

ever since they lost their monopoly, they have had the petulant attitude of a child deprived of a favorite toy. nsi needs to drop the bad attitude and focus on getting customers through superior service and cost. i suppose it can be hard to compete with the likes of joker, who offers ~$12usd registration for a year, versus $35 - $85 to nsi.

also, has anyone noticed that nsi seems to be giving themselves a rather large amount of domains? they have netsol.com, netsol.org, networksoutions.com, networksolutions.org, networksolutions.net, nsi.com, nsi.net, networksol.com, and netsolution.org - and that's just the ones i can think up off hand.

i will never give a dime to nsi.

--

Cybersquatting.

[barracg8]

I wonder if we will reach a point where people will find a way to start squatting.

Cybersqutting is usually meant to mean buying a domain that you do not intend to use, to sting money out of people who will later want that name. This is more like cyber-real-estate-speculation.

Squatting is when you make use of a property that you don't own, but that the owner isn't using. If people are going to register names, then leave them unused so they expire like this, then is it possible to start squatting in the domain?

I guess squatting involves:

1. Breaking in. (brute force password in some way?)
2. Moving in. (set it to point at your IP)
3. Swearing blind to the cops that you didn't actually break in, you just found it that way :P

Worked For Me

[robt]

An organization I work for had its web designer and maintainer recently go out of business. The defunct business arbitrarily placed the organization's website with a new third party host and vanished. After the group committed thousands of dollars to build a new website, I checked Whois to determine who was hosting their existing site. I was shocked to learn that their domain registration had expired 26 days earlier. I immediately called Network Solutions and, much to my relief, was told that there was a 30 day grace period on expirations. Without any assurance of being reimbursed, I took the responsibility to renew the registration for ten years--and was glad for the opportunity to do so!

The Absolute Solution To NSI

[Seumas]

Through use of the nanotechnology described in John Sundman's Acts of the Apostles, a well-funded and scientifically composed group of do-gooders could produce impeniterable nannites, with a payload of templates for a modified human genome map. The alterations of this map would reduce or eradicate the greed and idiocy genes of all involed at NSI.

While this may seem an expensive endeavor, indeed, I believe that selling these expired domains back to their original owners (or to the public thereafter, should the offer be refused) at a reducced price should raise sufficient funds for such a project.

For further humiliation, and as a warning to those who would follow in the footsteps of NSI, I also propose that sequences of genes be altered stamp all affected with the encoded phrase You have been owned by the Domain Name Liberation Front. This, of course, is purely optional and at the discretion of those who would lead this proposition to fruition.
---
seumas.com

In a perfect world...

[chaobell]

If I wrote the rules, I would give the original owner of the domain name a reasonable fixed period of time, say, 90 days, to renew. After that, the name would go back up for grabs. Actually, that's probably more than enough time for the owner to cough up more dough.

Why not release them immediately? It's one thing for someone other than Joe Domain to snap up www.joedomainname.com immediately after Joe Domain lets his renewal slip. But a couple of months ago we had an incident...we host most of our sites with a certain hosting company who shall remain nameless. One client's domain name up and ceased to work one day. The client had paid us, we had paid the nameless hosting company...but the nameless hosting company had forgotten to pay NetSol, and this client had competitors who were dying to get their grubby little paws on his domain name. If that name had been released into the wild again right after it expired, there could have been a hell of a mess for us to clean up. So a reasonable delay, then, is good. Holding a domain name for a year or more is ridiculous. If Joe Domain hasn't renewed his name by then, NetSol oughta realize that he probably never will.

Re:In a perfect world...

[Trailer Trash]

And last year didnt Microsoft forget to pay for passport.com? That would have been interesting...

Major point: Microsoft did not forget to pay for passport.com. Network Solutions screwed up and sent the notifications to the old billing contact at Passport Radio, the company that had sold passport.com to Microsoft.

This brings up another good reason to not immediately put a domain name up for grabs: Network Solutions could end up in a world of hurt had they further screwed up and let someone else grab passport.com.

There needs to be a well-documented, fixed time period (90 days after the expiration date seems reasonable) after which a domain name is available.

Michael

Why DNS?

[jasno]

This may sound like lame, uninformed flame-bait, but why do we even need domain names?

What about a distributed search engine type of approach? There's got to be some way of avoiding this kind of centralization and still manage the anarchy.

Any Ideas?

Re:Why DNS?

[Syberghost]

What about a distributed search engine type of approach?

Let's see, how would that work.

First, you'd have to have some way of knowing where to start searching. Say, a file listing the sites that knew the further info. There could be several of them, say 13 of them for redundancy.

Then, you'd need a standard protocol for talking to them.

You could type a name into a search tool, and it'd use that standard protocol to go get the information.

Each of those sites would have enough information to know where to go for the next part.

You could break it up by words; so that, for instance, all of the 13 core servers would know where to go for information about .com, and then the servers that new .com would know who knew about .microsoft.com, and then that server or servers would know about support.microsoft.com.

That would let you have as little or as much redundancy at each stage as you cared to.

Then you would have to fully document that standard according to currently-accepted Internet documentation standards.

Would that do the trick?

(serious mode on)

We already have a distributed search engine approach to DNS. It has to be deterministic, however; you don't want somebody typing the address you gave them on your business card and getting your competitor's page.

Or, worse; sending email to your email address and having it go to somebody else.

"Here's your password for online ordering using your credit; we're sending it to what our search engine says is your address. Order away!"

--

Re:Why DNS?

[Wellspring]

I think domain names have a good use. Distributed approaches lose accountability (ie how do you convince someone that you are the 'official' site for something?). Also, you need a consistent way to lead people to your site-- search engines will return multiple possibilities rather than the specific site you want people to go to.

But as the guy who wants to burn all TLDs , I do agree that we need to move to a more elegant system for universal addressing (I favor, basically, the idea of having everything being a TLD-- so unless you are a gov site or edu site, your TLD is your domain name). Ultimately, there will need to be addresses, and with those will go trademark and property issues.

What disappoints me about this NSI thing is that it is such pathetic customer service. Their draconian agreement, high price and poor service is going to screw them sooner or later-- we can just register with companies which are more on the ball. In the long run, companies which don't produce a useful product get swept aside. Legal sneaky games and clever tricks might help you a little on the margin, but you can't build your business on it. Unless you are a trial lawyer. But I digress....

Yes, NSI does it again

[xercist]

*sigh*...this is just another example of nsi acting irresponsibly without regard to the public they are (should be) serving.

Back when I used them, I found that changing an IP for a name server was much harder than it should be (their systems will respond months later, sometimes never, even when simply responding that there has been an error in the 'automated' processing). Trying to find a phone number to call was quite hellish, and it took much searching through their site (cleverly designed not to let people find their number easily). Oh, yes, and it wasn't an 800 number either. Calling it, I'm immediatly put on hold for 45 minutes, only to talk to someone who claims 'I cannot help you, please call this number....'). I ask to speak to the supervisor, and here's what I find amazing -- he refuses! I ask him for his name - he refuses again, this time claiming he already told it to me!

Amazing...just...amazing....


--

NSI can't spell either.

[xercist]

"The expiration date appears in the WHOIS database so that the registrant may be able to verify how long they have locked in there domain name registration."

--

Probably just to avoid a potential lawsuit

[ttyRazor]

They're probably just trying to avoid ugly situations that might occur if someone misses the bills on BigAssSite.com and some squatter jumps on it faster than you can say Yet Another Precedent Setting Domain Name Related Lawsuit. Imagine if that domain that microsoft forgot to pay the bills for last christmas was snatched up by someone else. It doesn't make it right, but it could get really ugly if some high profile site let their domain slip and lost it to some idiot squatter.

Re:nsi is evil

[Virtual Fish]

joker is cheapest if you have your own nameservers ... i don't (not everyone does :-) but there are other registrars out there who don't charge you for that ... e.g. www.firevision.co.uk register your dotcom domain for £8 (i think that's $12 but i would have to check :-) ... i did have a whole list of cheap registrars but not to hand

ob-disclaimer: i don't work for them, but i have used them in the past and found them to be very good.

Was previously mentioned here, but not whole story

[Masem]

NSI has recently implemented a plan where expired domains are put into an auction such that they can get even more money for said domains. The slashdot discussion is here.

However this does not fully explain the results from this question. This policy above has only happened within the last month, but as others have pointed out on the thread, there are domains expired as far back as Feb.

IANAL, but there's an interesting case here to watch for that could bring contract violation charges onto NSI. If, as suggested, they take those domains into their public auction but AFTER they changed the contract, would this not be violating that? It's understandable if you fall a day or two behind, but NSI is claiming they're months behind. If they are that far behind then they are being inefficient adn should lose their gov't contract by the same point. (And from my recent experience with other registers, the case appears isolated at NSI).

When did NSI turn bad?

[AtariDatacenter]

If you think your registrar has policies that work against you, switch! I used the Domain Name Buyer's Guide to select a new registrar to transfer my domains to. (Mind you, they do direct ICANN registrars only, not TUCOWS or CORE.) My choice? Gandi.Net provided an excellent value ($12/yr), and have what is probably the best legal policy around. Get THIS... The client owns the registered domain name. GANDI simply acts on the client's behalf.

About Network Solutions... they're anything but even handed or consistant. Of course, in the past, they HAVE let expired domains go back into the public pool and be re-registered by another person. (Take "police.net"... that was a customer at an ISP I worked for that let their domain name drop.) I know of many others. I also remember years ago they're harassing us and denying us a registration for "bingo.net", even though it was not taken at all! They would not let us register it!

Anyone who has had a great number of dealing with NetSol will have some war stories. This is definately a case where I'm going to vote with my dollars. I encourage others to do the same.

No particular reason

[Greyfox]

You could rewrite a few magic functions in the C library (man gethostbyname should give you most of the functions you'd want to replace) and replace DNS with a protocol of your own choosing. LDAP maybe? Or some anarchistic communal scheme. Though not many people would use it at first, I have a feeling more and more people will become disenchanted with the ICANN and the current registrars. Already having a different solution in place and well tested at that point could be quite worthwhile...

Laws regulating registrars ala Bill of Rights?

[swb]

Is it possible that we might need actual laws regulating the behavior, rights, etc of domain name holders, registrants and registrars? As often as I hear complaints about NSI and see for myself the shoddy, greedy business practices they pursue I wonder if maybe there shouldn't be some law(s) providing a framework for how domain name and registrar conflicts should be adjudicated.

I know that federal laws are seldom the "solution" to anything, but the existing "watchdog" group ICANN seems powerless or unwilling to force NSI to change its business practices, and the alternative, the civil court process is expensive and doesn't provide a particularly just outcome, especially in light of the way NSI continually tweaks their user agreement the way Voyager rotates sheild harmonics to their own advantage.

What I envision is a framework for domain names that spells out rights for owners, obligations for registrars, and overall rules (to combat squatting or other abuse), as well as "penalties" for violation -- which could include cash fines for registrars up to an including loss of registrar certification for repeated violation.

It would be nice to have a due process system as well, although I'm wondering if it wouldn't make sense to instead encourage adjudication of disputes through binding arbitration with perhaps an e-arbitration system that would allow written submission of arguments to an arbitrator for timely and inexpensive adjudication.

Does this solve more problems than it creates, or have I been spending too much time in good-government land lately? How the framework rules are established is entirely unstated -- since it would be federal law, I'd think that a panel of community experts could draft the initial set with debate/modification by congress. It's far from perfect, but giving so much power to NSI and then expecting market forces to straighten it all out is rather naive IMHO.

I know that .com, .net, and .org are somewhat global in scope and that what I'm suggesting would be US-only in scope but as these are "supposed to be" US-only, applying US laws to these domains & registrars thereof only makes sense. Having the same system for non-US TLDs isn't totally out of whack.

Re:general pool

[(deleted - SCI)]

Well, technically NSI is no longer a monopoly...

Actually, they are. NSI is still the monopoly on the Central Registry. No matter who you register through ... rigister.com, joker.com, etc., that registrar has to pay NSI a fee to put you in the central registry.

Frankly, I think this runs counter to the concept of independent registries. I'd even go so far as to say that the central registry owner should not be allowed to compete with other registrars by selling names directly to the end user.

They act like a monopoly, too. Remember when their (monopoly) contract was taken away by the same US Department of Commerse that granted it? The Govt had to allow allow extension after extension. Then they similarly 'negotiated' with ICANN, when ICANN is supposed to regulate them.

Fundamentally NSI is holding DNS hostage. They can do (or more specifically, 'allow' through pretend negligence during a handover) enormous damage to the integrity of the system and nobody wants that. I'd almost be tempted to say we should take the hit now (i.e it will only get worse with time) but too many people are hoping to avoid 'the great DNS blackout of 200X' altogether.

Re:Replacing them isn't as easy as it sounds

[(deleted - SCI)]

Don't think it's so easy to 'do business with others' if you already have a domain (I have domains going back 5 years)

1) your registrar still has to pay NSI a fee.

2) they can and will refuse to acknowledge the transfer on any minor technicality. And if that technicality is an error in their customer data -- as it often is, you'll have the devil's time getting it corrected (in my experience)

3) The dirty secret of their 'auction' is that it really hides the fact that it guarantees that any NSI-registered domain is registered via NSI by the new owner.

4) NSI expressed doubts as to my 'validity' and refused to honor a transfer of one of my domains last year (I'd have been okay if my ISP had cooperated, but they seemed frightened of having to learn to learnother registrars, or registrar transfers, and actually chastised me for trying to leave NSI) So, since it was a minor domain, I let it expire, figuring I could probably pick it up via another registrar in a few weeks/months. No dice. I ended up re-registering the expired domain via NSI (with a check, hoping that I could use the correct info on the check as proof). They took my money but still refuse to correct my info (even though the e-mail address and phone number they had for me are both dead now)

Re:(Entirely off-topic, but very disturbing.)

[rlkoppenhaver]

Check Slashcode. The module (I believe it's called mod_adbanner) was released a week or so ago.

slashdot should change registrars as an example

[Jamie Zawinski]

There seem to be conflicting stories about how hard/easy it is to move your domains away from NSI, so slashdot.org should try to transfer to a new registrar and tell us how it went.

This will have a few cool effects:

• If everything goes smoothly for a high profile, valuable domain (without them having to release their lawyers!) then that's good news;

• If things go badly, NSI will get lots of bad press;

• If things go really badly, and slashdot loses their domain name as a result, NSI will be in the middle of a serious shitstorm: they'd have to answer a lot of questions about their screwed up practices to major news media, and it might actually result in them changing.

Failing that, how about someone collect a summary of peoples' experiences trying to change registrars?

If I believed it would work, I'd change all of my domains away from NSI, but I don't want to risk losing any of them, so I'm not gonna be the guinea pig...

Network Solutions caught RED-HANDED.

[AtariDatacenter]

Mind you, I'm sure NetSol will have a good [fake] explanation for this.

As shown in a previous message, "icy.hot" is one of the domain names that have expired back in February, yet is still unavailable for re-registration. Here are the revelant parts of the WHOIS information:

Domain Name: ICY.COM
Record last updated on 08-Mar-1999.
Record expires on 15-Feb-2000.
Record created on 14-Feb-1996.
Database last updated on 7-Jul-2000 16:34:07 EDT.

Go to Network Solution's Home Page and try to register "icy.com". You can't. Netsol says "Sorry, icy.com is not available.". Fair enough. So, I've decided that on behalf of the owner of icy.com, I'm going to pay his bill. So I go to the NSI Online Payment System. I enter "icy.com" as the domain I want to make a payment on. Here's the response I get:

Related information could not be retrieved for the domain. This could be because:
1.The top level domain is not a com, net, or org.
2.An invoice number could not be created for this domain.
3. The invoice number given does not match with that in the database.

Well, it isn't #1, and it isn't #2. It certainly isn't #3 because I did a lookup by the domain name, not the invoice number. And if I enter a domain name that completely doesn't exist, I get a different error:

Related information could not be retrieved for the domain. This could be because:
1.The domain information has not yet been processed or updated into the database.
2.You entered an incorrect domain name.

So, the domain name can't be registered. Okay. The domain name can't be renewed either. (Netsol *might* try to claim that they can do it with an invoice number -- but COME ON. Why would it be blocked in their automated payment system? I'm sure they'll have a good lie for this one.)

Network Solutions is making up the rules as they go along, and they need to have their feet held to the fire and be accountable for their actions. Someone ought to sue them over this.