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NetSol To Do Domain Name Auctions
Here's an "official" email I've gotten.
****************************************
Domain Name: XXXXX.COM
****************************************
Creation Date: 03/28/2000
****************************************
June 22, 2000
Kohn Doe
XXXXXXXX@cfl.rr.com
Important Message Regarding a Modification to
Your Domain Name Registration Service Agreement
------------------------------------------------
Dear Customer,
Network Solutions' records indicate that you
are the Administrative Contact for the domain name
listed above, but we have not yet received payment for
our services, as your agreement with us requires. We
have already sent two notices to the registrant's
billing contact and have deactivated, but not deleted,
your registration. We are now modifying your agreement
to provide you with three options to satisfy your
payment obligation and avoid collection agency action.
The options are:
1. PAY: Pay in full by June 28, 2000 at: http://payment.networksolutions.com/go/tind/payments/ Upon payment in full, the registrant will enjoy the balance of their term of service and full rights to their domain name under the agreement. PLEASE DO NOT SEND A CHECK. Payment must be made online.
2. DELETE: reply to this email by June 28, 2000, instructing us to delete your Name immediately and we will do so. You will still be liable for payment in full and may be subject to collection agency action.
3. AUCTION: if you do not PAY or DELETE as above by June 28, 2000, we will enter the domain name in Network Solutions' new auction site in an attempt to satisfy the registrant's payment obligation. Any and all proceeds that we receive from the transfer of your domain name registration (up to the full registration fee) will be retained by Network Solutions and your domain name will be transferred to the successful bidder. By selecting this option, you hereby authorize us to act as your contact to perform all necessary actions relating to the auction and transfer of your domain name registration.
If this domain name account lists your hosting provider as the billing contact, please contact them directly. For others, please call our customer service at 1-800-779-1710 from the United States and Canada. Outside of these areas, call (703) 742-4777 Monday - Friday from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. We hope this modification to your agreement is helpful to you.
Regards,
Network Solutions(R)
A VeriSign(R) Company
If you care, here is the company profile on Network Solutions.
John S. Rhodes
WebWord.com -- Industrial Strength Usability
How to Download YouTube Videos
...you wouldn't be getting threating letters from NSI. Do you complain about the electrical company when it disconnects you for not paying your bills? NSI is far from perfect, but they're entirely within their rights on this one - you agreed to pay them for services, you didn't pay them, and now they're turning off the service.
The only thing that makes this more interesting than a normal utility is that the service is distinctive - if you had bobsdomain.com and NSI transfers it, you can't just start paying the bill again to get service back. You'll never be able to get that service again, unless the new owner doesn't want it anymore.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
From: Business Account <BusinessA@netsol.com>
Subject: Please Read: Important Announcement from NSI to Business Account Members
> Dear Premier/Business Account Program Members:
>
> Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI) is implementing a new practice that could
> eliminate, or at least reduce, your obligation to pay us for your
> customers that have failed to pay for our domain name registration
> services. As you are aware, pursuant to the terms of your
> Premier/Business Account Agreement with us, you are liable to us for
> delinquency fees for the unpaid registrations of customers that you refer
> to us. Effective immediately, we are providing your domain name
> registration customers with an opportunity to satisfy their payment
> obligation to us by placing their delinquent registration in our new
> auction site. If such actions result in a transfer to a new registrant
> through the auction site, the proceeds we receive from the transfer (up to
> the full amount of the registration fee) will be retained by us to satisfy
> your customer's registration fee. In such event, you will no longer have
> the obligation to pay the delinquent registration fee.
>
> We believe this to be a sound and reasonable course of action for
> customers who register domain names, but refuse to pay for services
> rendered. We also believe that these actions will alleviate the payment
> burden from our partners. Generally, we have learned that if we have not
> been paid, it is likely that our partners have not either.
>
> So that you clearly understand the process leading up to this action we
> offer the following information:
>
> * We have sent the registrant three prior billing notices:
> 1. Original invoice
> 2. Late notice
> 3. Notice of deactivation
>
> The customer has still not paid for our domain name
> registration services.
>
> * On Thursday, June 22, the administrative contact for such
> registrants will receive an e-mail from NSI requesting payment for such
> domain name(s). This means that if a registrant has registered multiple
> domain names and has not paid for them, he/she will receive a separate
> e-mail for each unpaid name.
>
> * The administrative contact will be given three options.
> 1. Pay the registration fee electronically by June 28, 2000.
> 2. Instruct NSI to delete the name by June 28, 2000.
> 3. If the domain name is not paid for or is deleted by June 28,
> 2000, it will be entered on the NSI auction site. Any proceeds from the
> sale of the name (up to the full amount of the registration fee) will be
> retained by NSI and the domain name will be transferred to the successful
> bidder.
>
> There will be no exceptions or exemptions from this e-mail as it is
> extremely important that these registrants be given one final chance to
> pay.
>
> We thank you for your cooperation. Please direct any questions to your
> Partner Relations or Business Support team.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Thomas E. van Gorder
> Vice President, Sales and Business Development
>
Edith Keeler Must Die
It would probably depend on the contract that was agreed to when the service was initiated. I haven't read the contract/agreement from NSI lately, but I assume it has some sort of "pay up or lose your service" clause in it.
Rather than simple theft, it looks more like cleaning up of delinquent accounts.
----------------------------------------------- "If that doesn't work, we can shoot it!"
I wonder if they contacted their own administrators? If you don't pay your bills, they should take away the domain name. It is like your house, they take it away if you don't pay the mortgage...just like your virtual home online.
Registrant: Network Solutions, Inc. (NETWORKSOLUTIONS4-DOM) 505 Huntmar Park Drive Herndon, VA 20170 Domain Name: networksolutions.org Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Zone Contact: Network Solutions, Inc. (NSOL-NOC) noc@NETSOL.COM Network Solutions, Inc. 505 Huntmar Park Drive Herndon, VA 20170 US 703-742-4777 Billing Contact: idNames, Accounting (IA90-ORG) accounting@IDNAMES.COM idNames from Network Solutions, Inc 440 Benmar Suite #3325 Houston, TX 77060 US 703-742-4777 Fax 281-447-1160 Record last updated on 20-May-2000. Record expires on 13-Dec-2000. Record created on 12-Dec-1997. Database last updated on 22-Jun-2000 16:41:25 EDT. Domain servers in listed order: NS1.NETSOL.COM 216.168.224.200 NS2.NETSOL.COM 198.17.208.83 NS3.NETSOL.COM 216.168.224.201
Now, why would NSI not want to do this? The reason is that if they let it lapse then they give up control over the registration of that domain. In other words, under the old system, if someone didn't pay their NSI bills, then when the domain lapsed, someone else (or the same person) could easily pick up the domain and register it at another registrar, such as register.com etc. By auctioning off the domains they retain total control over them and thus simultaneously snag potential business away from their competitors and gain a little extra cash (and publicity) in the process.
It's quite devious really, just the kind of thing I'd expect from NSI / VeriSign.
get back to work and stop reading slashdot you.
---
Last year, negotiations broke down between me and a squatter over the transfer of a domain name I wanted. Rather than entertain his ransom, I decided to wait and see. I watched as the record expiration date passed and kept checking to pounce on its return to availability. After two months, I contacted Network Solutions, the registrar, and the reply I received was that registrants were given 30 days to renew or the domain name would be made available for sale. Well, that was nearly 90 days ago and the domain name still rests in expired but unavailable status. Now, am I to believe that "return to availability" means that it will be auctioned? Does NetworkSolutions somehow hold rights to a domain name in perpetuity simply because someone used them to register in the first place? If so...what a crock.
Mambo dogface in the banana patch
It's disturbing considering that NSI doesn't exactly have a history of keeping their paperwork straight. How many times have they transferred someone's domain after simply recieving an e-mail from a hijacker? How long after this policy is implemented until someone forget's to mark my domain as paid after recieving my check, and my domain is auctioned off? How many notification e-mails will they forget to mail off?
On a side note: I fail to see how auctioning off a domain name will hurt anyone but individuals or small businesses. Do you actually think if some Big Company with a recognizable name would let their registration expire, and their domain was auctioned off, that whoever bought it would be allowed to keep it? No, said Big Company would simply sue the pants off of the buyer for "copyright infringement" or something.
Every time I see a story like this, I see a little bit more of the Internet slowly swallowed up by the machine that is Corporate America(World). PETA get's back peta.org. Coca-Cola shuts down some fan-site. Fox goes headhunting Simpson fan sites. I know that some of this is inevitable with the growth of the internet, but it's still disappointing to see coroporations take over another thing in this world.
Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!
Network Solutions does not own ANY domain names apart from those that they themselves have registered. I agree that they should not be obliged to support any deadbeats who haven't paid their fees (including Microsoft), but once the domain name is freed, it should go back in the pool for a first-come, first-served process.
.com space, sharing that with many other registrants.
.com space.
Network Solutions, in its capacity as a government contractor, has already been through a carefully negotiated and litigated process to determine that they couldn't charge as much as $100 per two years, reducing the price to $75.00.
Further, Network Solutions is no longer the "owner" of
Auctioning off domain names is something for the non-contractors to do -- NSI cannot do both without a conflict of interest, and certainly the appearance of impropriety. IMHO, they should either stop the practice immediately, or be stripped of their right to issue SLDN in
jhk asks:
Does that mean, according to the most recent legal arguments about intellectual property, that NSI is in violation of IP law for owning someone else's trademarks?
Not per se. At this time the "property" status of domain names is still unclear. While there was a string of decisions through 1999 that supported the domain-holder-owns-it theory, two decisions this spring instead supported the domain-as-product-of-contract theory. In other words, it only exists as a product of a valid contract between you and the domain registrar.
Could a company like Microsoft sue NSI for trademark infringement and demand ownership of the name microsoft.com, which would necessitate direct access to the root nameservers?
Under current ICANN policy, and recent court decisions, registrars are pretty much wholly indemnified, unless they themselves do something intentional against a domain-holder. Essentially, this is to get registrars (NSI, joker.com, anybody) out of the middle of lawsuits between trademark/domain disputants, but it also has the effect of holding them essentially blameless in cybersquatting or domain-hijacking cases (cf. recent decision in sex.com case).
----
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
This may be totaly redundent or totaly wrong {if I'm lucky maybe both} as I haven't looked at every post but, As I understand it to hold a name that you are not using, that some one else has a legitimet use for, then auction it off for more then it would cost to regester it in the first place falls dead on for cybersquatting. They only say what will be done with the money up to what is owed but say nothing of what happenes with the rest of the money and if it's an auction then the bidding will go well over the price for meny names {if they cut it off at the owed amount then there will be no highest bidder as every one that wants it will top it out}. Taking colection actions and deleting the name would be fine, but I see auctioning it off as nothing different then what so meny people gripe at the cybersquatters for doing.
Dyslexics of the world UNTIE!! {doing my part to promote creative spelling}
Question reality.
Sorry, I meant "sharing that with many other registrars", not "registrants."
Buy the domains off auctions, and then transfer control to another company. Transfer any domains you have right now, to. Bleed them of everything they have, they certanly deserve it.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
The NSI letter says that auction proceeds "up to" the due amount will be retained by NSI. What it doesn't say is who gets the rest. What if I let "groceries.com" go into arrears and it's sold for hundreds of thousands. Who gets the hundreds of thousands less $70? Me, as the prior owner? If not, and NSI keeps it, I think they're letting themselves in for a class action suit, since NSI would be asserting an ownership interest that it isn't entitled to, IMO. If I as a private individual get a judgement against a party and attach and sell their property to satisfy it, I'm only entitled to what I'm owed, not the entire proceeds.
NSI is acting with ever-increasing arrogance (remember their new provision in their agreement that says, effectively, that they own your domain and can take it back at any time?). It's time to get a legislative rein put on these banditos.
Before you hit me with the flamewall, I see that they limit their take to the full registration fee. Objection Withdrawn, your Honor.
What they should do and what they can do are 2 different things. I'm not saying that they are doing what they SHOULD, but they are doing what they CAN. And they do deserve to be reimbursed SOMEHOW. This seems a lot nicer than suing everyone, and a lot easier. Even if it is just typing 2 lines into a config file. If you buy something, you have to pay. They may not deserve the money, hell registrars may not even deserve to be paid for what they do, but when it comes down to it, they don't deserve the shaft either, and they are just covering their own ass.
Eh...
Hey, if they kicked it back into freespace, they'd only get, what, seventy bucks for it.
They're not stupid.
No, not stupid at all: greedy is the more accurate description.
So they'll auction them off, because, hey, that way, they can make a hundred times... nay, ten thousand times!... more money.
You know, it's time we took the Internet back. Greedy bastards are making it next to impossible and damned unaffordable to have reasonable/meaningful domain names.
--
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Unfortunately their PGP support has been fucked up for over a year and their "support" people don't seem to be able to come up with an explanation or advice besides "switch to another authentication method."
This was the #1 reason I just ditched NSI.
Hell their own billing system is seriously twisted... I transfer'd *ALL* my domains away from NSI months ago yet I'm still getting "Final Notice" invoices demanding payment for domains that are not registered through them... Personally I was getting tired of there systems always screwing up and modifications not getting made, ie- I left an ISP over 1.5 years ago... there are still domains hosted by my previous employer with me as the contact even though I've sent in domain modifications AND fax'd the changes AND call'd them on the phone and spoke to a body (can't really say one way or the other as to it's warmth)... They [NSI] have many other things they should be concentrating on rather than trying to auction off domains that aren't paid for.
this is a troll. whoa.
Discuss trolling and moderation
While I agree that they probably have a right to do whatever they can to recoup losses for delinguent accounts, with their past record of billing on time, this could cause problems. I own several domains. For a couple, I didn't receive the invoices for them until weeks after they were due. What if I had lost these domains to an auction where it was Network Solutions' fault?
Also, what about the case where a disgruntled employee who was fired or quit is still the billing contact? Sure, the company should have changed it, but with companies with many domains, it may get overlooked. Sure, I'll probably get flamed saying that is the company's responsibility, but I think there should be some checks and balances in the process.
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Discuss trolling and moderation
At a minimum it is disturbing because it is anti-competitive. They should be able to attempt to recover their losses from the original registrant, but doing so by public auction means that no other registrar has an oppourtunity to dip into the existing pool of names.
Why stop at non-payment. If I decide to cancel my name, why won't they (or do they already) schedule and auction in order to keep the name 'in the family' if you will.
interesting. not only does NSI jumpstart it's new auction operation but it prevents "competitive" registrars from ever getting a potshot at SLDs freed up due to nonpayment. oh, and what exactly happens to the resale price in excess of the unpaid bill? gee, i wonder.
that question is especially important because arbiters under ICANN's UDRP have tended to regard reselling an SLD as a sign of "bad faith" -- punishment for which is the loss of the SLD. but here we have NSI, a registrar/registry, auctioning off SLDs itself!
i can't wait to see what ICANN has to say about this dubious maneuver. of course, if ICANN and "competence" could fit in the same sentence, this possibility would have been solved when the UDRP was first imposed by its yet-to-be-elected board. but they can't fit in the same sentence, and the problem remains. oops, NSI just solved it.
and roger cochetti, the former IBM washington cheese largely responsible for installing dyson at ICANN, now works for NSI -- so i imagine what with the rather large favor she owes him, she might not have much to say all. what a pity.
scoundrels and incompetents, the lot of them. i do hope slashdotters wake up en masse to what a scam ICANN is.
I'll bid a six pack of Coke and a bag of nachos. (Where money fails, junk food is sure to rule :) ).
Is this post not nifty? Sluggy Freelance. Worshi
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Not necessarily the deleted ones, but there's a searchable database of expired domains over at Whois.net.
LetterJ
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
I'm no lawyer, but I think that's grounds for a lawsuit. As much as I hate solving things through lawsuits, NSI deserves it after THAT.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Why hold an auction? Just dump the domain name back into the pool of free names. Do they think I'm really going to bid millions of dollars to own smut.com?
Dear Customer:
Network Solutions, Inc. ("NSI") has received a request to transfer your domain name from NSI to another Registrar. This is to notify you that the transfer request has been approved by NSI and was sent to the Registry for processing.
Please contact REGISTRAR@NETSOL.COM if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
Registrar Change Group
Network Solutions, Inc.
Good bye NSI, hello JumpDomain and OpenSRS!
--- polarbear
What if you haven't 'forgotten' to pay for it, but intend for it to lapse? I don't recall my agreement with NSI saying that I'm authorizing them to keep the domain alive past the amount of time for which I initially paid. It should be thrown back into the pool for whoever wants to register it next, if anyone. How long is this 'auction' process going to keep the domain off the market?
Ok, think of it like this. A company makes a load of toxic waste, and dumps it in the ocean. Was it the right thing to do, no. What if there is no way that they can legally get rid of it? What if even having it is illegal? They didn't just wake up one day and say, "You know, I hate baby seals, lets poison them all!" They don't want to go to jail. They can't get rid of it in any legal fashion, so what do they do, they dump it. If you were in the same situation, you would probably do the same thing. Do you really think that they can assemble an underground storage facility somewhere without being found out ever? Of course not. Unfortunately, someone has to cover your ass in this world, otherwise you're gonna get f*cked. They're tightening their chastity belt, and right or wrong, they're doing it.
Eh...
law school as life
There's a difference between harming the company and harming the trademark. Harming the trademark would be providing goods or services that trade on the good name of the trademark holder but aren't provided by the trademark holder. PETA.org wasn't doing this. They might have been trying to harm PETA the organization by hosting a parody/anti-PETA site, but they weren't misappropriating PETA's trademark to do so. That is, no reasonable person could believe that PETA.org was really operated by the ethical PETA. Use of a trademark in a parody is fair use, remember?
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Network Solutions says it will take all of the proceeds *upto* the Registration fees.
My question is: Is there a minimum bid price? Otherwise instead of paying the $35 a year, I let my domain expire, then bid my $0.02 for a domain name that no one wants and end up paying $0.02 a year compared to $35.
Comments? Mods?
I am
Look at that peta decision. Lets say I buy one of these domains at auction. NetSol gets my cash. The former owner sues me because he has a copyright on that domain and a judge forces me to give it to him. So I just lost whatever I paid to buy it at auction, my fee to NetSol, AND however much I paid content creators for their work.
No fucking thanks.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
This seems to me to be a pretty logical idea (although I'd prefer they just kick the domain name back out into freespace instead of auctioning it off.)
If you aren't paying for a domain, why should you be allowed to hang onto it?
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Where did you find this?
there goes afternic and Great Domain's hope for being the big auction boys. ;)
;)
I know Verisign had something up their sleeves.
cad-fu: kicking CAD back into shape
I had a domain name once that I waited 6 months for NSI to delete from their records so I could re-register it with another registrar and correct the registrant information. The reason I couldn't delete, modify it or transfer it is because a friend originally registered it with a fake entity as the registrant waaaay back in the days before we had a clue as to what was going on. So then NSI removed all the phone numbers from their site and I had to trace some numbers down through doing dns lookups on all their different records. Even after the domain had expired they wouldn't delete it for 40 days. At the 40 day mark they put it into a 5 month waiting list to be deleted, all the while they had stopped the DNS from working. So I had to wait all that time for them to delete it with my site broken and I was completely helpless. What a royal pain in the butt. If anyone needs to get in contact with them on the phone, call the operator or sales and have them transfer you to tech because you won't be able to get through to tech unless they've changed their system around.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I recently registered a second domain with a different registrar.
I do some web hosting for small businesses and individuals. Since I read about Dotster here on /., I've registered 19 domains with them. It's been problem-free and the web interface is light years better than NSI's stupid email-based crap. I am concerned, however, about 3 personal domains I've had for some time that are still over at NSI. I'd like to move them, but I don't want them to disappear into a black hole, and NSI just seems to be getting more aggresive about losing existing domains to other registrars.
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"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
If the recent Slashdot story is correct, you don't actually own your domain name. NSI does, and they lease it to you for $35 a year.
The whole registrar system needs redone just as badly as the DNS does (which I've said before, more than once). What a friggin' mess!
Constitutionally Correct
As you might know, I own my own domain name, and am slightly upset by this myself. One could say that one has the right to own one's own domain name because it's a trademark. However, this also leads to sticky situations - what if McDonald's Fruit Stand wants http://www.mcdonalds.com/? The way the auction goes is not that you start the auction imediately - you wait for the party to pay, and then start the auction. It's indeed fair for Mr. McDonald to register that name for his fruit stand, if he so chooses and McDonald's fails to pay. Trademark law takes care of Burger King registering that name (and also protects the Linux name, too). What the NSI is doing there is fair because it's the best alternative.
-o Disclaimer: My employer doesn't even agree with me about C indentation style. o-
NSI is not the only offender. This link is to a story a friend of mine submitted to slashdot, about the total lack of security at register.com. Anyone have a site to suggest registering at that doesn't suck?
Alright, so internic is now acting like an Internet Repo man. They have all the right in the world if somebody is not paying for something. I don't see a real big deal. You register a domain, you then have to pay. You don't pay, they take it back. Seems like simple logic to me. Or, I could be way off base. Please feel free to correct me.
Does anyone have the address for this auction site, or is it not live yet?
Hey, I hate to say it, but if you wanna play, you gotta pay. I know that I don't like working and not getting paid for it. They are merely trying to press users to pay for what they have, and are repossessing just like everyone else does. I know that if I was running a webhosting firm, and you didn't pay me for a year, and ran up a huge debt, that I'd take off your website and sue you for the losses. This is a relatively minor action on their part by means of what they legally COULD do, they're actually being fairly civil about this, despite the flack that they will surely take in the threads of this article.
Eh...
Baka +1 Bonus on by default.....I should have the option to mod my serious comments up (I have the karma, so I'm god for it, really), but if I fire off something st00pid like that, I'm not going to remember to keep it at 1.
Is this post not nifty? Sluggy Freelance. Worshi
I don't know how important this domain is to the company, but say their main site goes down because they lost their domain. What will they do?
They will go after NSI. When they realize NSI is bigger than they are, they will go after you. Nevermind the ethics of the situation; just protect yourself and your $$$ and send a note to your former employer, and wash your hands of this business.
While I think it's justified to repossess something that has not been paid for, I'm not sure about putting the repossessed item up for auction. This seems like a good money-making technique - I'm sure the highest bidders will pay much over the typical price for the popular domain names. Oh well, I guess it's legal (and deliciously capitalist).
Now I wonder if slashdot.org has been paid up recently?
-----------------
The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we're uncool. -Crowe
Nice move on their part. Let's imagine- what happens when something like hotmail.com goes unpaid (which has happened before?) That's right... instead of getting 35$ (or whatever NSI is charging during this phase of the moon) when someone realizes their mistake, now NSI gets to extort the new owner for however much they feel like. Note that the notice doesn't say what happens to the money above and beyond what is owed... think that it disappears? I doubt it. It'll go straight into NSI's pockets. For most names that will expire, this isn't a big deal- at most they'll clear only a slight amount above what they are owed. But for names that expire and are highly in demand, this gets NSI a huge return. Nothing illegal in it, I guess... but it reeks just the same.
~luge
IAAL,BIANLY
The U.S. Gov never ran it. It was always contracted out to a corporate 3rd party.
I'm not sure if NetSol can auction your name if you registered it with another registrar. It would depend, I think, on whether that registrar had paid for the name in time or not. It seems perfectly feasible for NetSol to auction the domain name if the registrar you work with didn't sent NetSol their money in time...
Paradox !-)
My best guess is they must be annoyed at using time and (probably human) resources to try and collect fees for registering domains.
Consider the following:
You and your buddies are drinking one night and on a whim decide to register www.coupleofdrunkguys.com, after a couple of interesting side trips due to typing errors you do so. All in all it probably took you 5-10 minutes to act on your impulsive thought. Later you decide it was a bad idea, can't find affordable hosting, get tired of running a site for alcoholics, and so on and so on. It's only been a week or two so you decide to not pay the fee. Poor Network Solutions (annoying as they are) gets stuck with a multitude of people doing this. Devoting massive time and resources to send emails and contact collection agencies finally annoyed some manager, so this is an attractive way to recoup losses.
I personally can not blame them, so long as an honest attempt was made to contact whoever registered the domain - including via snail mail.
Andrew Borntreger
Andrew Borntreger
Champion of cinematic disasters
asdgjwgkljlk
Discuss trolling and moderation
"Any and all proceeds that we receive from the transfer of your domain name registration (up to the full registration fee) will be retained by Network Solutions..." So at least they are hinting that you will not pay more, but Network Solutions fees are outrageous compared to other registrars such as openSRS. I'm at the point now where the entire thing is ridiculous to me. How many of us see domains on a daily basis that are being held strictly for the purpose of selling with no intention to use the domain?
and to those who wonder why I simply say...
A large amount of evidence was put in on behalf of the plaintiffs for the purpose of sustaining their allegations of negligence on the part of employees of one or more of the defendant companies, and to show that the roads owned by those companies were operated in connection with each other on joint account, or that there was such community of interests among them as would make all of them liable for the acts of agents or employees of one.
I think the domain registrars should take note. Legal precedents like this have been around for over a century for a reason.
This WILL be abused. People will monitor the domains up or grabs and bid on them whether they have any relevance to the rest of the world or not. Then they'll sell them back to the owners for a ridiculous sum.
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-- The Brory Stool Co.: We accidentally the best stools from behind seven proxies, since 2009.
Yes, I do know of some juicy names to grab. A company now apparently defunct owned a whole bunch of Dutch placenames .com. They expired and have partly been released recently (a couple a day...) and grabbed by one new company using the very same ISP (websites haven't changed...). More are still to be given back to the market. Pity for the script running ISP/new company. They will have competition from money people now at auction. Great loss to the value of scripting abilities :-)
I think alot of people are missing the point here. It's not really about the previous owners rights, if they didn't pay for it then yes they don't deserve to own the domain. It's about the fact that NSI is trying to hold onto it's monopoly by NOT letting domains out of it's system. Alot of the money Registrars make is from people regging domains that drop from NSI. This move if it goes through could seriously damage the domain free market as users no longer have a choice of registrars. The only way to change registrars is to pay NSI!
Also, wasn't it NSI that claimed that domains were not property so they wouldn't be liable for hijacks? They're not making sense because by holding these auctions they are making it clear that domains ARE property and contradicting themselves.
"I think the country could be spared a lot of agony and the government could worry about inflation and a lot of other problems if [Nixon would] go on and resign."
"[There is] no question that an admission of making false statements to government officials and interfering with the FBI and the CIA is an impeachable offense."
It's obvious that these quotes have been distorted to suit the political leanings of those who repeat them (politicians? bending the truth?! never!) ;)
to change registrars all you have to do is tell the new registrar, and they take care of everything. by what my "bosses" have said, it's only for NEW registrations. this is where people use myinternet.com or webprovider.com to bypass our prepayment, then try to cancel when payment is due. i don't know about you, but I want them to pay, just like you like to get paid for working, I want to be paid. how can we get paid if nobody pays for thier domain? everyone wants everything free. - an NSI employee
Um, if its not paid for you dont own it.
They can do whatever the heck they want.
Pay your bills and you wont have this problem!
--- Tulsa T. Nawi, On Display @ Shattered.com
we offer password protection, as well as PGP. these options are available FREE. (you have to pay for the PGP software, of course not from us. spend the 10 minutes to change your authorization scheme and stop blaming us for you're laziness. everyone knows e-mails can be spoofed. so get CRYPT-PW - NSI employee
If you don't pay for your domain you should lose it we can all agree. However somehow not truly connected but somewhat on the same thread is the whole PETA dispute. I love tasty animals too, especially that bit of a chicken I ate for lunch. What is to keep big corporate enterprises from not paying and then suing you when you register the domain they let lapse? Register with joker.com. Joker is a reseller for Core. The interesting thing about Core is, if you follow the link and look at the bottom of the page, that they are based in Switzerland. The Swiss seem to be less stupid about such things than these US people are. So if they try to drag you into court over it, your domain is registered internationally. Lawyers, politicians, and other such people(?) seem to be infatuated with physical jurisdiction. Let them know that they can talk to you in international court.
99% of the time it's because you move and forget to tell us what are we, mind readers? you should also know when you're domain expires and be ready for it. Sorry, but we have 10 million customers, and not the time to track down every single person who forgets to tell us they moved. it's so easy to jump on the anti-NSI bandwagon. - an NSI employee
one million ultima online gold pieces...
"Leave the gun, take the canoli."
this is just a placeholder till i send back my real sig from the future.
D
----
The only way for a domain that is not renewed to be auctioned is for it to legally be transferred to NSI to own and sell - as referenced by their "all proceeds will remain in the coffers of NSI" statement. How does ICANN permit an expired, unregistered and unused (by definition) domain to be owned by NSI? Isn't that grounds for the death penalty under the Cybersquatting provisions? I was annoyed when NSI unilaterally implemented $100 domain fees while under government contract and payment back in ~95. I was amused when NSI adopted a domain transfer policy where a domain essentially had to be paid for twice - e.g. a 2-week old domain, fully paid in advance, would have to be paid for again by the new entity. Now I'm completely stupified that this beltway insider corporation has managed to define unregistered domain space as theirs to auction - not for $35/year, but at the highest price possible. Orrin Hatch must be on the board of directors. *scoove*
That's no worse then putting in back into free pool and some cybersquatter taking it and auctioning it on eBay or alike. At least here you know that this domain *will* be registered for you after you pay the money. And if you can't pay your bill in time (paying online requires almost no time, just do it!) you deserve to loose the domain, and then netsol can do with it whatever it likes.
I'd be very happy if auction money will be streamed into establishing new top-levels, but that just sweet dreams, I think...
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
So they can collect waaaay more than the $70 that they would get if they were to kick it back into freespace and wait for someone else to register it.
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
If it applies to all, then shouldn't ICANN have a say in the matter? If it is only with NSI, then we shouldn't be surprised... we realized long ago that they weren't the best registrar to use.
btw, I use dotster as my registrar ($15US/year last time i checked)
NetSol'n is not a very good thing. They only got where they were by holding a monopoly on domain names and charging outrageous prices for them (sound familiar?). It doesn't surprise me that much that they are doing this because they have generally been an abusive registrant. I feel sorry for those poor souls who still have domains through them, because they are paying outrageous prices and no longer own their domains (with the new license). It's pretty sad that I registered my domain with Gandi.net for only $11 and that people who pay Network Solutions several times as much don't even own them. Oh well. Network Solutions also seems to think that it's above the rules. I wished to register my family domain, mendelson.net, and they were squatting it. Worse, however, was that they aren't even paying for it! Their license on the domain expired on November 14, 1999, and they still own it! Who knows what crazy rules allow them to do so.
"I have not failed. I've simply found 10,000 ways that won't work." --Thomas Edison
Transfer to register.com today! or somewhere else. This company sucks, I hope they die as soon as posible
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
This is very very wrong for them to do because once someone registers a name with NSI, it can NEVER be registered with another registrar. It seems they're trying to reclaim their monopoly hold in a small way.
Of course if someone registers the name they can always switch it over to another registrar, but they're still stuck with having to pay money to NSI.
This is complete bullshit, NSI should not be able to do this.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Im personally fairly sick of the huge amount of domain squatters out there who register 6000 (give of take a few) domains, only to not pay for any of them, but keep the hold on em untill they can successfully auction them off on ebay or sell em outright (making money for nothing). Trouble is I dont really think NSI should auction them off, they should just become open again. I know of a few domains id like to register (through someone other thatn NSI) that arent in use, and more importantly probably havent been paid for.
.brad
just my 2 cents
Drink more tea
organicgreenteas.com
flesh eating ants records
IANAPornStar (or a journalism major), but this report is inadequate and lacks journalistic integrity-- the source is completely anonymous and no other verification has been done on the allegations. We have what appears to be an official email from NSI to a customer. We have little to no background on this email-- previous emails, etc etc. I am not overly fond of NSI, but this appears to be more than a case of an expired domain name. It looks more like someone has somehow caused them to register a domain and not paid the bill.
If the domain name is expired I believe it is highly inappropriate for them to attempt to auction it to anyone. Coincidentally there appears to be no such activity on their web site-- probably because they "get" this. There are a number of registration services which are allowed to register abandoned domains (just the same as formerly non-existent domains).
Any thinking person knows this, and cannot accept this forced domain name auction EULA amendment as anything other than a tactic to force payment on a delinquent account. So, IIRC this sort of thing is called FUD, IMHO.
I do not have a signature
This is more a statement on the "journalist" than anything else, but since when does an e'mail to NSI qualify as a "hacker attack"? Hell, if sending an e'mail makes a hacker, then I've been an 37337 h4X0r 60D since 1994, and never even realized it!
I will 0WNJ U!!
] D
For more info, see the Domain Name Buyers Guide, located here.
They have been planning this for a while--they haven't been releasing domains back into the pool.
= ==========================
For almost a year, I've been watching a few domains that have 'expired' according to Network Solutions WHOIS database.
I recently sent an email to Network Solutions inquiring on what the time period is after a domain expires until it is put back into the pool.
Here is my their response (sent to me on June 9, 2000)
>Thank you for contacting Network Solutions.
There is no set amount of time from the date that a domain name is cancelled
until it will be available for registration by another
party. Once a domain name is available for registration it will no longer
be in our WHOIS data base.
Best Regards,
Steven B
Network Solutions Registration Services
World Wide Web: http://www.networksolutions.com
E-mail: hostmaster@networksolutions.com
Tax ID #: 52-1146119
===============================================
> NicTracking Number:
> Service Request Number:
> Question or Comment Category: Register a Web Address
> Question or Comment: I frequently see domain names that have "expired" by more than a month or two, yet they are still not available to be registered.
>
> How long after a domain expires with Network Solutions does it become available for someone else to register? One particular domain that I am interested expired on January 30, 2000 and has displayed an "under construction" page for over two years.
>
> Thanks in advance
>
> Rob Fenstermacher
---
Interested in the Colorado Lottery?
Interested in the Colorado Lottery or Powerball games?
check out http://colotto.com
Can ICANN or another registrar file a court injunction to prevent Network Solutions from auctioning off Domains that it no longer 'owns'?
This is egregious! Network Solutions is attempting to retain its monopoly and prevent the other registrars from being able to register the domains in question.
Network Solutions has been retaining expired domains for a while now.
I wonder how long they have been planning this?
---
Interested in the Colorado Lottery?
Interested in the Colorado Lottery or Powerball games?
check out http://colotto.com
What if I register one of these domains at another domain registrar? Shouldn't I be able to get it? Does this mean that NSI in effect owns all the domains registered with them since they can hold them from being registered by somebody else? This opens up a whole sack of interesting/important questions about domain names.
Somebody pointed out on Usenet comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains that Network Solutions is sending these renewal announcements out from rereg@new-dump.prod.netsol.com, which isn't a valid E-mail address. Worse, new-dump.prod.netsol.com isn't a valid domain name. Thus, many anti-spam filters will discard the mail as spam with a forged source address.
It seems that this action gives businesses more of a stranglehold on the Internet. If NSI auctions these domains off, they give large corporations with deeper pockets a better chance to get the domain names they want. This would include the domain selling "services" like Greatdomains.com a chance to snatch up these domain names. I view this in the same way that used car dealerships buy all the cars at "public government auctions" for their own reselling purposes. However, this doesn't erase the fact that the individuals/groups affected should pay their bills.
Network Solutions doesn't/can't own the domain name (or is that the debate?). They are the Registrar. Once a domain registration reaches the end of its term, if it is not renewed, it cannot/should not be controlled by any single registrant.
The more I think about this, the more steamed I become. If I'm misinterpreting the issues here, please correct me. The question I have is what can we do besides rant on the Slashdot forum?
Mambo dogface in the banana patch
The latest policy at NetSol is that payment is due upon registration of the domain. It is not like the old days when you could register now and pay later.
Can I use my domain as collateral for a new car?
NetSol is simply trying to get there monopoly back through a back door. Let's all complain to ICANN, though that will not help. Let me guess: this auction is an unofficial test bed for the new TLDs that nobody needs but that surely will come if we read the ICANN site... They might also auction those in stead of selling them for a mere $6 (which is what other registrars pay NetSol). I am sure business.biz will fetch more than $6 or $35 (which is what NetSol charges to customers). Why stick to the first come first serve principle? It isn't good for business. I think I'll set up a registry, yeah! If you think I'm nuts, look at dot.tv.
also,the email is not clear on what will heppan with names that were paid for 2 years or more but not renewed,will they be going to the auction too ?
I was in the process of trying to transfer my domain to another registrar when my agreement with NetSol expired. (This was a few months ago before any registrars had any idea how to transfer a domain.) Now that the domain has expired, I can't transfer it or delete it or change any of the DNS info. It feels like NetSol is holding my domain name for ransom. I was expecting the domain to simply become available again so I could register with someone else. (Yes, I know someone else could register it if they notice that it is available first, but I am not worried.)
One second you slashdot guys are complaining that there is not very many english word domain names left, and the minute something gets done to do something about it _most_ of you are whining. Network Solutions should of always recieved payment up front unless you passed a credit check. Network Solutions caused this mess by allowing all these cybersquatters to register every name under the sun and then not pay for it, until someone came along offering said cybersquatter thousands of dollars. My corporation has been dealing with people like this for 2 years ago, with one of these jokers who registered pratically all three letter word registrations. Don't we want the fair market economy to reign? History has proven that if you don't allow normal economic pressures to balance the market, things just get all screwed up. I'll give you the great depression for starters. Network Solutions should stop giving the milk away for free.
I suggest that you do it before hand. If you wait til it expires they will find a way to screw you.
In speaking about President Richard Nixon in 1974, a young Arkansas congressional candidate spoke to the need for high standards:
"Yes, the President should resign. He has lied to the American people, time and time again, and betrayed their trust. Since he has admitted guilt, there is no reason to put the American people through an impeachment. He will serve absolutely no purpose in finishing out his term; the only possible solution is for the president to save some dignity and resign."
The candidate, Bill Clinton, set his own perfectly understandable standard:
"If a President of the United States ever lied to the American people, he should resign." Arkansas, Democrat Gazette (8/6/74)
You mean I could have duped them into giving away a domain name and then I could have just not paid them for it?
Then I could get upset when they wanted to auction it off to someone who might be willing to actually pay for it (opening up yet another potentional auction when 'they' don't pay, in which I may get it back again...)
Is this common to request services and then not pay for them? Does the government work this way with my taxes? Can I not send them my taxes next year?
This might be a good year after all...
The only problem is, I'm not sure how to handle the process of transferring my domain name without getting screwed by NSI. I've heard a lot of horror stories from people who have attempted to do just that. Could someone offer some advice on when, how and what to do for transferring your domain name from one registrar to another? Specifically from NSI?
Should I wait until it has expired and just renew it somewhere else? Should I do it before it expires? Do I have to send any paperwork or follow any specific process through NSI themselves? I know a lot of this info is available on NSI, but it's so obfuscated and unreliable that I would rather have information not from what they say but from the reality of what occurs -- and who best to ask than people who may hav already gone through this?
Thanks for any help you can provide!
---
seumas.com
If you don't pay for a domain name it should go back into the pool for other people to register(like it has always been). NSI is trying to prevent their current batch of domain names registered through them from being registered via other registrars. Complete and utter bullshit if you ask me.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Good point. When a bank auctions off a house, after the bank is paid off, the auctioneer the fees, etc.. if there is anything left, it's supposed to go to the guy who had the house seized (or his other creditors perhaps). I'm sure NSI will (perhaps illegally?) pocket the change.
This is a bad faith thing, especially given NSI's poor record of missing received payments, of which stories on
--
One is left to ponder how NetSol can "auction"
something that NetSol claims
is NOT PROPERTY.
If NetSol's posture in regard to "ownership"
is contrasted with their new "auctions", this
creates a possible basis for getting a court
ruling that even NetSol (by its own actions)
clearly agrees that the domain names themselves
are "property".
What rationale would they have for charging
a higher price for the SAME "service"?
Science is the art of infallibility, perpetrated upon non-scientists
The really scary thing here is not that they're actioning off names of deadbeats to recoup losses, thats fine.
But lets think for a moment...
They *own* your domain name, not you. If you loose it for whatever reason, too bad.
They can now auction off deadbeat names instead of sending them back into the pool, with the potential to make huge sums of money.
Their billing practices are horrible (read further down this thread for examples).
So... for all you conspiracy theorists, whats to stop a big company from simply paying someone at NSI off to "accidentally loose" your billing info. You don't get the handy reminder that its time to pay, in the hope that you forget about it for whatever reason. You do that, it goes on the auction market, somebody else buys it out from under you for a large sum of money. You have no recourse, because they own the domains and can do whatever they want with them.
Feel free to add your own conspiracy theories, thats just a sample. The real point is that this is almost a license for them to print money. Not that it'll help anybody steal names from big corporations who can just sue over them anyway, but the little people will get shafted around nicely here.
Especially if you take it to the next logical step. If this sticks, whats to stop them from auctioning off *all* domains? Think about it. Its not that far away from this, because once again they own the domain. So, you could pay $35 to renew it, but what happens if someone else is willing to pay $100? $1000? $10000? That may sound rediculous now, but go back a couple short years, and the notion that anybody but you owned your domain names was equally rediculous. Its not that far fetched do this kind of auctioning anymore.
I really hope ICANN does something about this, but... yeah right. ICANN seems to work for NSI, not the other way around.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
You've got to know Florida Today. It's progenitor is the man behind USA Today, and now both are Gannett papers. Florida Today is the primeval USA Today-- News Lite. Furthermore, it's about the most left-wing paper I've read (granted, that hasn't been many). Most people around here don't even take it. In my post, I called what happened a "hijacking," which I think is more appropriate. You'd think in a town as repleat with high-tech people as Melbourne, Florida, we'd have a more with-it newspaper. Instead we've got this paper that's more interested in touchy-feely things than reporting news.
Slashdot has officially gone to crap with the posting of this article. It is now a haven for crybabies who are complaining that they aren't allowed to do whatever they want--whether it is holding a domain name without paying for it (just think about how ridiculous this is) or copying copyrighted songs without paying for them (again, think about it). Morons.
Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?
Well, they gained control of the domain names, they don't want to lose the revenue from them, they were promised revenue, they are trying to recover that revenue. Life isn't always so clear cut. I know that if I have a porsche that I can sell, I'm not going to give it to someone else to sell, even if I do step on a few toes. It may not be the ethical thing to do, but it makes business sense. I don't necessarily agree or disagree, but their legal right to do so could be argued.
Eh...
Back in 1997 I registered a domain for myself using what was then the only game in town. As the 2-year renewal date approached in 1999, I had switched ISPs and addresses, both email and physical, several times. Every attempt I made to contact Network Solutions regarding the change in Billing Contact information failed. Sending email from another address would only return me an autoreply chiding me for using the wrong email. I exhausted my patience waiting on the phone for an actual human to talk to, and even the Send-Them-A-Letter-On-Company-Letterhead trick (what company letterhead? It was a personal domain for personal use, fercryingoutloud) didn't work. So I merely decided to wait it out.
The domain got put on hold for non-payment (I wasn't about to just blindly send NS a check, cause I know while they'd appreciate receiving money, they weren't going to actually do any legwork to figure out to whom they should credit the payment.) Every morning I hovered over the extended WHOIS information and when the blessed day arrived when WHOIS returned with no info, I hopped over to joker.com and re-registered the domain cheaply and easily.
I would have been more than happy to have actually paid NSI for the domain renewal and gotten it over with. In fact, I'd have loved to have been able to change my contact info both for billing and technical issues, as the domain needed updated DNS server information as well. Stuck with an up-for-renewal domain that was, due to this informational snafu, essentially useless. Masochism runs deep in some parts, I guess.
But what if the story took place this year? What if I found I couldn't contact NSI at all yet desperately wished to renew the domain? It'd be taken from me and put up for auction? One cannot help but feel a Kafka twinge of helplessness when imagining such a scenario. And I'm worried that folks who find themselves in a similar bind will suddenly lose control of their domain, and they'll lose control of it because of NS' piss-poor "customer service" track record.
And that's really the worst part of it all.
Thanks, guys.
`First I've heard of it,' said Merrell, `why's it got to be auctioned?' Mr. NSI shook his finger at him for a bit, then stopped and put it away again. `What do you mean, why's it got to be auctioned?' he said. `It's a domain name. You've got to sell domain names.'
~ Give me 101 plastic soldiers, and I will conquer the world.
NetSol is such a hypocritical company. They registered Mendelson.net a couple years ago and haven't paid for it since November 14, 1999. I hope they auction it off because they are squatting my family name! In fact, they shouldn't even have the right to auction it off. It should be taken out of their database and I should be able to go register it at gandi.net for $11.
Domain Name: MENDELSON.NET
Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.
Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
Referral URL: www.networksolutions.com
Name Server: DS0.INTERNIC.NET
Name Server: RS0.INTERNIC.NET
Updated Date: 13-nov-1999
Last update of whois database: Thu, 22 Jun 00 04:29:52 EDT
Registrant:
Network Solutions, Inc. (MENDELSON6-DOM)
505 Huntmar Park Drive
Herndon, VA 20170
US
Domain Name: MENDELSON.NET
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
Network Solutions, Inc. (NSOL-NOC) noc@NETSOL.COM
Network Solutions, Inc.
505 Huntmar Park Drive
Herndon, VA 20170
US
703-742-4777
Billing Contact:
Network Solutions, Inc. (DOMAIN-ORG) domains@NSI.COM
505 Huntmar Park Drive
Herndon, VA 20170
[No phone]
Record last updated on 23-Mar-1999.
Record expires on 14-Nov-1999.
Record created on 13-Nov-1997.
Database last updated on 22-Jun-2000 16:41:25 EDT.
Domain servers in listed order:
RS0.INTERNIC.NET 198.41.0.5
DS0.INTERNIC.NET 198.49.45.10
"I have not failed. I've simply found 10,000 ways that won't work." --Thomas Edison
Good thing I've always despised Network Solutions and have always used Register.com for my personal domains.
A registrar who can't automate most of their processes through a web interface, who I have to end up phoning, staying on hold for two hours, then take 30 minutes trying to explain DNS servers to the tech I get, is someone I'd rather just stay away from.
It's quite simple - by doing this, Network Solutions keeps their market share, instead of giving it up to the competing registrars out there........
I agree.. they have done this.. it's awful. After reading further.. it seems what they are saying is this:
.. they don't say.. presumably, to the ISP in question. ..
certain ISPs and other companie shave 'premier' agreemetns with NSI, in that they can register domains on behalf of their own clients *without paying nsi immediately*. (you or I can no longer do this.. we must pay immediately).
By contractual obligation, these companies *MUST* pay NSI for domains registered, whether their own clients back out or not. So.. generally, at an ISP doing this in volume, many people (enough, anyway) will bail out and leave the ISP hanging with an obligation to pay NSI for the domain (as per contract) and no client to collect from. So, until the payment is resolved, the domain is *technically* registered....
NSI is saying that now, rather than simpliy *having* to pay NSI for the defaulted domain, they may choose to have NSI auction it off, whereby NSI will collect fees 'up to the amount owed' and then the rest would go to
This actually does make sense in context
The owner of the unpaid domains are given three options.
1.) PAY and still own the domain
2.) DELETE the domain and it can get grabbed by anyone, but you still owe the unpaid amount.
3.) AUCTION the domain in an attempt to pay for your registration fees. Note that this is only up to the full registration fee, so Network Solutions doesn't actually make any money off this. They only get the money that is due to them.
Well perfect, now I guess it'll be auctioned off "to recover collection fees?" That's ridiculous. It sounds like you enter a lifelong committment to continually renew your domain or else face foreclosure or something.
As far as the one I've been watching, I guess it'll just go on the auction block. Cripes...
Next thing they'll probably do is modify the CGI script on their home page that let's you "check domain availability" and then roll it right into a new auction so all new domains are instantly an auctionable item too... :(
Unfortunately their PGP support has been fucked up for over a year and their "support" people don't seem to be able to come up with an explanation or advice besides "switch to another authentication method."
:-)
Really? I never had any trouble with it.
I'd always fire off 2 copies of everything - one signed cleartext, the other ascii armored.
One of them would always go through in a couple of days.
I may have had many reasons for fleeing NSI, but the PGP authentication option wasn't one of them
--
Email address is real.
OpenSRS is getting all my future domains (I have 6 now, with plans for a few more).
TheGeek
TheGeek
http://www.geekrights.org
Kill the monkey
I think it really depends on WHEN you registered you domain name. If you registerd when they were an organization, then they have no buisness auctioning off the name - because they were simply the only people who did it, and it would be unfar as far as I'm concerned. If, however, you registered after netsol became a company and the whole thing was opened up, then they should have the right to recoup lost funds from any delinquant account (and any accounts made before they became a company would roll over when they are renewed).
;)
I'm for this, and against it at the same time.
What should be done is put a rule that says that if you are buying an auction domain you MUST be buying it to actually use it - no squatting. This way, if I saw "mynick.com" open I could register it for my site and the original company couldn't say jack because they lost it and I am using it with a valid reason. I do not agree that squatting should be allowed or, intentionally buying a domain to sell it back to it original owner.
However, here's another way to look at it. If you are delinquant on your payments it shows that you really don't care about the domain name. Regardless, you are DELINQUANT in your account and netsol has FULL RIGHTS to recoup lost income by mitigating damages. They mitigate by doing the only thing possible - selling off your domain to recoup the costs.
Here's what I think they should do (and it's only my OPINION so no flames please)..
if an account becomes delinquant send an inital warning letter twice in a 30 day period (say, day 1 and day 15). After day 30, shut off the resolution of the name and send another warning. This would make it VERY obvious to the owner that something is up. After that (now 60 days) send 2 more warnings over a 30 day period as before (now a total of 90 days). After that, if the account is not paid they should sell the domain and use the monies to a) recoup the money for the delinquant account and b) pay for the new registration..
This is good people... Netsol is nolonger and organization and now a company with financial interests.. if ya don't like it, start your own
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
So now all we need is a group with a hate-on for NetSol, and a wack of cash. Hmmmm.....suggestions?
TheGeek
TheGeek
http://www.geekrights.org
Kill the monkey
It is now a haven for crybabies who are complaining that they aren't allowed to do whatever they want
...
That's cause we're all freakin rich from our IPO shares of Linux companies
Oh, you mean you're not?
Will in Seattle
Just a thought.
JHK
http://www.cascap.org and then some
I remember Record-last-updated, and Record-created, and Database-last-updated...
Just wondering..
t_t_b
--
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
I wasn't contacted because my domain was going to go up for auction; this was sent to ALL "Business Partners" (whatever the hell that means), which means ISPs for the most part, warning them about this new procedure.
I'm just pissed that they presume that they can do this. It precludes other registrars from selling the domain names, and it creates a slimy microindustry, and could promote cybersquatting. It's a bad move.
-merrell
Failure: When your best just isn't good enough.
The game "Monopoly", that is. No one has a monopoly anymore on domain name registrations (thanks ICANN for that). ;)
Now, in the game "Monopoly", doesn't it state that if a player is not willing to buy a new estate, it will be auctioned and sold to the highest bidder?
Looks like Internic is still addicted to "Monopoly", be it for real or a game
Make way for industrialization!!!
True, we are all gonna die...
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
I own three domains myself, and I am not particularly happy about this.
This only affects you if you have not paid for your domains. If you have not paid for them, they are not yours.
If you aren't "happy" about this then either you haven't paid your bills as you contractually agreed to do, or you aren't affected.
-JF
MrJoy.com -- Because coding is FUN!
NSI already has "some kind of insurance against this kind of thing". Two, in fact. They're called CRYPT-PW and PGP.
I still wouldn't use NSI anymore, but they do have better protection than the stupid MAIL-FROM that everyone loves to hate.
It seems that companies tend to take advantage of the domain name system by buying up all domains even remotely related to their business. As a consumer in the market for a domain, it infurirates me to see "server not found" errors when trying to connect to sites using names that I am more than ready to put to use.
d omains_so_i_just_registered_this _one.com/
In this day and age where a court can rule against a private individual for holding a domain that is legitimately being put to use, why don't we see more individuals taking action against companies who buy domains without any intent of developing a site under the domain.
The whole point of having a domain name system is to make transversal of the internet more managable, and yet it seems that the careless purchasing of domains has caused a regression in the purposed managability.
http://www.some_company_is_squatting_hundreds_of_
My understanding (I don't have time to look into the contract until I get home from work) is that Network Solutions is still bound by the original agreement with the US Government to distribute the US TLDs. When did they get the right to unilaterally rewrite this contract, and auction the names for many multiples of the fee they can legally charge?
NSI changed their polices so they own your domain name no matter what. Now if they get your contact info wrong for some reason or you change email addresses, its next to impossible to change said information.
So, yes, everyone using NSI is at risk of being affected by this, not just deadbeats.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
So all they are saying is that if you don't pay what you owe them, they will take the name away form you. This seems reasonable as long as you are notified of it before hand. Anyone hear of a "Repo Man?"
Don't pay taxes on your house or car and what happens after a while? It gets seized and possibly auctioned. No big suprise here.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
If you think tou own a domain name if you registered it with NSI, you are wrong. Look at their terms and conditions, effectively, *they* own the domain and simply let you use it.
Understanding is a three-edged sword. --Kosh
I got an email a few minutes ago from NSI saying basically the same thing, that a domain name I was listed as a contact for (not billing contact) was going to be auctioned off, and that collection proceeding would be brought against me.
Since I don't work for the company in question I fired off a reply telling them so. However, knowing NSI's notorious lack of ethics, I wouldn't be surprised to see my credit rating impacted regardless. Won't make any difference -- I don't pay former employer's bills and they will get nothing from me.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
"I own three domains myself, and I am not particularly happy about this."
Well if you paid for them, then it won't be a problem for you. If you are just holding on to domains you registered and aren't using, you are just another cyber squatter, and deserve at least this, along with a thorough ass kicking!
"[There is] no question that an admission of making false statements to government officials and interfering with the FBI and the CIA is an impeachable offense."
Notice he said "interfering". He finds nothing wrong with illegaly getting hundred of FBI files on his opponants and critics.
Finkployd
This seems to be a pretty standard practice in the real world... auctioning off a foreclosed home, or repossesed car... granted that they're doing things fairly quickly... that's hardly even enough time to get in touch with anybody regarding reposession of a domain name...
It'd just be nice to see one of the bigwigs get nailed with this... Seeing Microsoft lose www.microsoft.com would be funny... of course, even if you won the auction, you couldn't really do anything with it, because of recent laws and court decisions against cyber squatting and trademark infringment... that could be an interesting scenario...
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
I find it pretty funny actually.
Your car can get repo'd, now your domain can be as well. If you want something, most companies require you to pay for it for you top retain possesion of it. Kinda funny that way, huh?
It's a little hypocritical in that NSI seems to have claimed in a court case that domain names are not property, but there are plenty of examples of corporate hypocracy out there. This is a pretty minor example, in my book.
I think that the answer to the problem is simple: Pay your bill! NSI is due their money if your domain is registered through them. If you don't re-register it with another registrar, or if you don't cancel the domain, they are certainly entitled to their payment for maintaining it in their system.
My gut feeling is that all the people complaining about this don't like NSI because they are NSI...it's great to pile on NSI just like it is with Microsoft. But I don't think that NSI is doing anything wrong, other than maybe looking a little foolish in their arguments over what is property and what is not.
=h=
Perhaps NSI should be made accountable for this kind of stupidity. I can't imagine not getting an encryped password from NSI. I can't imagine NSI not requiring confirmation on domain name changes. They've even admitted that this thing has happened before.
I don't speak for my employer, of course, but I'd think twice about renewing my domain through NSI without some kind of insurance against this kind of thing.
Yes, I'm a little perterbed about it. No, it doesn't effect me personally. Yet.
Jeff
In this part of the USA you don't just take someone's property and auction it off. You need a court order before you can repo something.
This would make it simple theft here, could be interesting to see.
And the Geek shall inherit the Earth
Since the letter specifies ``all proceeds that we receive from the transfer of your domain name registration (up to the full registration fee) will be retained by Network Solutions'', this raises the obvious question of what they do with the proceeds in excess of the registration fee. Seems obvious to me they'll go the the previous domain holder, right? That's the fair thing for NSI to do.
Or maybe NSI doesn't expect anyone to pay more than $35 at the auction. Yeah, that's it---no one will pay more than the lowest alternate registrar's price.
I refuse to believe corporations are people until Texas executes one. -- desert rain on http://www.dailykos.com/user/
anyway here is their email to business account holders for your further elucidation...
> Dear Premier/Business Account Program Members:
>
> Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI) is implementing a new practice that could
> eliminate, or at least reduce, the number of unpaid registrations that
> occur when your customers fail to pay for our domain name registration
> services. As you are aware, pursuant to the terms of your
> Premier/Business Account Agreement with us, your customers must remit
> payments for our services in a timely manner for your account to remain in
> good standing. Effective immediately, we are providing your domain name
> registration customers with an opportunity to satisfy their payment
> obligation to us by placing their delinquent registration in our new
> auction site. If such actions result in a transfer to a new registrant
> through the auction site, the proceeds we receive from the transfer (up to
> the full amount of the registration fee) will be retained by us to satisfy
> your customer's registration fee.
>
> We believe this to be a sound and reasonable course of action for
> customers who register domain names, but refuse to pay for services
> rendered. We also believe that these actions will alleviate the payment
> burden from our partners. Generally, we have learned that if we have not
> been paid, it is likely that our partners have not either.
>
> So that you clearly understand the process leading up to this action we
> offer the following information:
>
> * We have sent the registrant three prior billing notices:
> 1. Original invoice
> 2. Late notice
> 3. Notice of deactivation
>
> The customer has still not paid for our domain name
> registration services.
>
> * On Thursday, June 22, the administrative contact for such
> registrants will receive an e-mail from NSI requesting payment for such
> domain name(s). This means that if a registrant has registered multiple
> domain names and has not paid for them, he/she will receive a separate
> e-mail for each unpaid name.
>
> * The administrative contact will be given three options.
> 1. Pay the registration fee electronically by June 28, 2000.
> 2. Instruct NSI to delete the name by June 28, 2000.
> 3. If the domain name is not paid for or is deleted by June 28,
> 2000, it will be entered on the NSI auction site. Any proceeds from the
> sale of the name (up to the full amount of the registration fee) will be
> retained by NSI and the domain name will be transferred to the successful
> bidder.
>
> There will be no exceptions or exemptions from this e-mail as it is
> extremely important that these registrants be given one final chance to
> pay.
>
> We thank you for your cooperation. Please direct any questions to your
> Partner Relations or Business Support team.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Thomas E. van Gorder
> Vice President, Sales and Business Development
~ppppppppö
Let me get this straight. Somehow, a domain that is not renewed is in a 'special' state that may be auctioned? Give me a break.
If it isn't paid for, then it's not registered. If it's not registered, then nobody should be able to 'auction' it without registering it first. And I belive netsol should not be allowed to do this.
I don't have any domains that expired. This was sent out to ALL business partners (read the post). Excuse me while I whip out a book and teach you how to read.
-merrell
Failure: When your best just isn't good enough.
If memory serves, it was administered by the InterNIC, which is a registered service mark of the US Dept of Commerce. Under that arrangement, Network Solutions was under govt contract to do the grunt work, but their freedom to institute these outrageous policies was severely limited or nonexistent.
I don't see it this way. Why should another company pay NetSol anything at all? NetSol is only to be paid for names registered through them. As a domain-name holder, you are free to register with any service you like, pay them the required fees, and they must then pay their dues to ICANN. My real problem is that NetSol is beginning to take steps that will eventually serve to legitimize a claim to actual ownership of any domain they have in their database. The end result being that domains are only 'leased' officially, and you have no choice but to pay whichever registrar maintains the domain in their database. I do NOT feel a registrar should own ANY domains other than their own, and as consumers, we should have choices when registering a domain. In the end, if I have to search through multiple registrars until I find which one owns mydomain.com then pay them whatever exorbitant fee they want just for the privilege of temporary use of that domain, that would be a _very_bad_thing_. I have already heard warnings from friends to avoid using whois to search for unused domains, as certain registrars have taken up the practice of adding those domains to their databases and charging for the right to register. The whole business reeks to me like some kind of scheme to block off the sun and then charge rental time on patches of sunlight.
These people looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
They are saying that in order to be auctioned, someone must
a) register a domain
and
b) Not pay for it after several notices.
In effect, netsol has performed a 'service' for them, and have yet to be paid.
I think it's sleazy, and the real answer should simply be to delete the domain immediately upon non-payment, and allow it to be re-registered by someone else, as technically, the contract is void.
First off, the existing system worked fine. If your bill lapsed then your name went back into the pool of those available and somebody else paid the 35 dollars and picked it up.
.com? register .net and .org as well!). I suppose it was only a matter of time until they got into speculation themselves.
Non-payment / reposessions have never been considered a revinue stream... Untill now.
NSI has in the past proven that they are very bad at maintaing their contact database (along with other things they can't manage to maintain).
So now they have a financial incentive to continue their incompetence. If they forget to bill you or send the bill to the wrong place; well then if its a popular domain their screwup could make them thousands (millions?).
I would not dare to imply that a cash-flushed corporation could talk to their rep's at NSI and do a little 'wink wink nudge nudge' for an excuse to revoke a domain from a legitimate owner.
First we saw the 'we own your domain' policy change, now the NSI auctions; I suspect it goes downhill from here. I could imagine seeing a new renewal policy where the domain goes to the highest bidder.
NSI has always given quiet approval to the domain speculators as well as promoting blatant violation of the RFC's (registering
All I can say is that if you are still with NSI and you are not a multi-million dollar corporation then you should probably transfer to another registrar. Beyond that you should ensure your domain contact information is accurate and current and know when your registration renewal date is coming up.
Can someone post that URL with the registrar's rankings based on registration policies again? Thanks.
-- Greg
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
Just a thought.
JHK
http://www.cascap.org and then some
Dear idiot,
____________________
This email was
requested to be sent
by user 206.12.241.61
--------------------
If you are not this user, you may ignore
this offensive message.
-----------------------
As we can tell you are about to give us a whole ton a freekin money by buying a domain at our stupid, very expensive auction.
He, he, he,
Nice ta doo bisnass with you!!
GoOd LuCk AnD hAve A bOrInG dAy!
Network Salutions
_________________________________________________
------------------------
Is your sig file boring?
I think alot of people are missing the point here. It's not really about the previous owners rights, if they didn't pay for it then yes they don't deserve to own the domain. It's about the fact that NSI is trying to hold onto it's monopoly by NOT letting domains out of it's system. Alot of the money Registrars make is from people regging domains that drop from NSI. This move if it goes through could seriously damage the domain free market as users no longer have a choice of registrars. The only way to change registrars is to pay NSI!
Also, wasn't it NSI that claimed that domains were not property so they wouldn't be liable for hijacks? They're not making sense because by holding these auctions they are making it clear that domains ARE property and contradicting themselves.
LISTEN.
I was not sent this because I'm a deadbeat. Stop freaking accusing me of not paying for my domain names. I am not a cybersquatter, I legitimately use those domains for separate things. I have always kept up on the payments. This message was sent to ALL business account holders. I repeat, I am not whining that I have to pay. I am upset because this means 1) that it makes it difficult or impossible for other registrars to use the domain, and 2) it will promote a new cottage industry of domain squatting.
-merrell
Failure: When your best just isn't good enough.
JHK
http://www.cascap.org and stop on by for a latte, huh?
Hey dumbass, maybe you should learn to read. It was sent to ALL business accounts, not deadbeats.
-merrell
Failure: When your best just isn't good enough.
Suppose I register a domain, get a server certificate for www.name-someone-will-want.com, then put the domain into the auction? I now have the ability to serve https://www.name-someone-will-want.com/ with a valid certificate when the domain belongs to someone else. The apparently trustworthy secure server for whoever bought the domain is not under their control.
Do certificates expire too quickly for this to be a problem? Is there some check with the Certification Authorities? Has anyone in the registration business bothered to think about this problem?
Does anybody know if any juicy domain names are up for grabs (say, for instance, www.juicydomainnames.com)? Is there a list of these defaulting names?
If Slashdot is where the spelling-challenged go when they die, I'm in heaven.
Dear Sirs,
I think that Network Solutions would be a great name for a company, therefore unless you reply to this note by June 28th with a check for $1M (USD) I will be selling at my auction site.
Yours,
rw2
P.S. If you try to sell what isn't yours you sometimes reap what you sow.
Under auctions, the same rules about copyrights, trademark infringement, etc., still apply.
I guess it would get interesting if, say, the US corporation "ABC" decided to go head to head with the Australian Broadcasting Coproration - both of whom would have a valid claim to the domain.
one pound sterling for slashdot.org.
---
Uhh, that's not how I read it.
Three e-mails to two addresses AFTER you've forgotten to pay the bill sounds like a reasonable attempt to contact the domain holder.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Others have mentioned that NSI may be technically guilty of cybersquatting, but how about the fact that it is entirely possible that by auctioning off a domain name that is someone's trademark means the name could go to anybody... this has the potential to ENCOURAGE more cybersquatting.
Of course, it needs to be said that if someone registers a name and then looses it because they didn't pay for it, maybe they deserve someone squatting it on them.
Could be interesting.
The Digital Sorceress
If they aren't the registrar for your domain name, then theoretically, they can't pull this BS, right? Just a couple of weeks ago, they were in the media for changes to their policies regarding what they view as domain ownership. At that time, I stated I'd be switching my company to another registrar as soon as the current term expires. Now my resolve (no pun intended) has been strengthened, and I will seriously encourage everyone I can to look elsewhere for domain needs. I most seriously wish the US Govt had never turned this over to the private sector in the first place.
These people looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
I have a sneaking suspiscion that this was the part of the real reason they made that change.
...and has the same solution.
Refuse to use their products & services. I recently registered a second domain with a different registrar. They're cheaper, have a much easier to use administration setup, and you can actually talk to them on phone if you have a question. They even made transferrring my current domain from NSI easy & painless.
NSI has never had to think about customer service before, and they are apparently completely incapable of even understanding the concept - as a result, the new registrars that do understand it are going to (hopefully) bury them.
"I am concerned, however, about 3 personal domains I've had for some time that are still over at NSI. I'd like to move them, but I don't want them to disappear into a black hole, and NSI just seems to be getting more aggresive about losing existing domains to other registrars."
You can pay Dotster ($25.00 - this includes one year of registration [$15] & a fee [$10]) to move them for you. You don't lose any time remaining that you've paid NSI for; it's easy, painless, and takes less than 2 weeks.
So will be interesting to see what happens. Given NSI basically still run the SRS I think ICANN had better not wear light colored pants...
They are not kidding. dot.tv is the registrar for the .tv top level domain. They have a *very* strange TOS agreement. Try registering a domain, instead of just getting it "first come first serve", when you try to register, they immediately put the domain out for more bidders, and you'll have to compete for it.
If ABC decided they wanted to get abc.tv for their great new internet TV station, they would put in their notice, and dot.tv would put it up for auction, so, say CBS could bid on it too. ABC would have to be the highest bidder in order to get the domain which they deserve. With all that, ethics go right out the window. Greed is the winner on this playing field.
All this crap really makes me appreciate Linux, Apache, MySQL, and people who really understand good business.
Eagleson's Law: Any code of your own that you haven't looked at for six or more months, might as well have been written
Claiming that they own each and every domain name possible in the TLDs that they ultimately control the registration of I believe is tantamount to being the government. Basically, they are saying its their property first which amounts to eminent domain. That is crap. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't believe the National Science Foundation transfered that authority to them.
Auctioning domains. That's pretty interesting. An ISP that I worked with (I helped manage but wasn't an employee of) had its domains turned off claiming non-payment. Interesting since NSI had cashed the checks 3 months before. The only way Dale got that resolved was to call their attorney.
And they are so easy to get a hold of. Frequently you get no response from their automated forms and you are lucky to get someone on the phone. They frequently blow off faxes as well. And I speak from experience that they've lost the whois database many times. Usually no one catches it when they restore from a week old tape but one time they restore a 6 month old copy. Well, better old than none but this is crazy. I agree with the previous poster that NSI is trying still to enforce a monopoly that they don't own.
Beware trying the jump registrars. NSI disavows responsibility if you lose your domain in the process.
For years, NSI has been arrogant, unresponsive and inept. This is another example of arrogance. And easily could lead to the other two since they make frequent mistakes.
"The life of a Repo Man is always intense!"
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
This is the reason Internic changed its registration agreements to say that it owns all domains. That way it can auction the domains in the event that you don't pay registrar fees instead of returning it to the public domain. I call it theft pure and simple. How can companies like PETA claim to own the rights to PETA.org and have a it upheld in court and then Internic can auction off someone else's Domain/Trademark to the highest bidder?
Even NetSol doesn't expect payment for already paid-for domains. I must be missing half the story or something...
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
IANAL, but I think that, especially for those domains that were registered before NSI hijacked the whole domain registry system and for which agreements have been changed in a way that is probably illegal or void in most countries except for the USA, the owners can make a strong case in a court in their country of residence.
I would love to see NSI being sanctioned by a court outside the USA, but I think that enforcing those sanctions directly against NSI would be difficult under international law (although of course foreign assets could be frozen to force NSI to comply in such a case).
There is another options that would be more interesting, because it really shows the flaw in a system were one for-profit company, by the incompentence of the responsible US-government-sponsored organisations, has been handed a monopoly on what was once an international cooperation. (Essential the government showed that they were incapable of taking that monopoly away, since they backed down while trying to create a more competetive system, so now NSI still has special privileges that other registrars don't have, such as first access and best access and the ability to force the rules).
The option is to try to sue another root dns server operator outside the USA, such as NorduNet in Scandinavia, RIPE or LINX in Amsterdam, or WIDE in Japan) to force _them_ to reinstate a domain that was unlawfully (according to your local laws) cancelled by NSI.
It could break the global domain name system by having information at some root servers but not at others, but it would force people to really look at the issue and would force foreign governments to call the US government to task.
* to remove all the special privileges from NSI and give operational control of the DNS system to an organisation that is not involved in commercial domain name registration.
* to require restrictions on NSI for any domain name holder that had a domain name through NSI before there was a choice in registrars: to require NSI to not to change agreements anymore, and to provide an easy and fast way to transfer your domain to any other registrar.
EJB
Can someone tell me exactly what's being implied by "up to the full registration fee" here? Does that mean they won't auction them for more than $35? Or does it mean if they auction it for $10,000, NSI keeps $35 and then NSI keeps $9,965?
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
> so internic is now acting like an Internet Repo man.
No, they're acting like a domain squatter.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
NSI changed their polices so they own your domain name no matter what. Now if they get your contact info wrong for some reason or you change email addresses, its next to impossible to change said information.
That is an entirely seperate issue.
So, yes, everyone using NSI is at risk of being affected by this, not just deadbeats.
How? If the bill is paid on time the domain does not go up for auction. Period. I fail to see how the issue of screwed up contact info relates to this. They don't have to have your contact info right for your to pay your bill on time.
-JF
MrJoy.com -- Because coding is FUN!
I just spent 2+ hours on hold and working my way up the NetSol hierarchy to try and buy a domain name that had expired a month ago. The First Level Supervisor that I spoke to wouldn't give me his last name (just Tom C., and he not-so-politely explained that he was the only Tom C.) Basically, they didn't mention anything about the auction deal, and explained that when a domain name "expires" as it says in Whois, it doesn't really expire. They give a non-defined grace period, and then when that is up put the domain into a pool that is then batch processed to be released. (Although maybe now they will try and squeeze me for everything that they can get with this auction stuff) Their customer service has been consistently the worst I have ever dealt with. I had to transfer a domain name, and by the time the person who had it previously had the official Internic (NetSol's previous incarnation)documents notarized and sent in, they had changed the forms and rejected it. Now I know how the Russians felt under the Soviets Note:Most of the underlings I dealt with are nice, but ineffectual.
Well! Next time Microsoft forgets to pay for one of their domains, we'll know what to do, won't we?
------
------
You are in a twisty little maze of open source licenses, all different.
..last post?
Mr. Last Post
The interesting thing is not that they plan to take away a person's rights to a domain name, but that they chose to auction the name rather than just revoke it. This basically allows them to collect more than $35/year for a domain name. Furthermore, they already know a market exists for the nam, because at least one person wanted.
Basically, it transforms the importance of being first to the importance of having money (and the will to use it.) This is what I don't appreciate.
I don't practice what I preach because I'm not the kind of person that I'm preaching to.
Posted by 11223:
and this is a troll
Excuse me while I whip out a clue-stick and knock you on the head, but this whole thing seems pretty logical to me. If anything you're lucky NetSol didn't just take the domains away as soon as they expired and left you with no chance to hold on to them.
You may not like NetSol, and you don't have to pay them to maintain your domain record. But if you let your domain expire without paying you have nothing to complain about. There are costs associated with holding a domain name and you either pay it or lose it.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"