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:

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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.

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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

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.

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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.

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."

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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.