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What to Do When Your ISP Steals Your Domain?

Posted by Cliff on from the digital-claim-jumping dept.

sahonen asks: "Some web hosting providers also provide domain registration on the side, which is great for users who want to keep things simple. What ends up happening, though, is the user will want to switch hosting providers, but their old host will hold on to the domain to try and lock the user in. I've seen this happen many times and it's not pretty. This happened to a friend of mine just recently and he's asking me for advice. I don't want him to have to buy another domain when he's worked so hard to establish his old one. Aren't domains legal property (we are in the US here)? Can he nail the old host for cybersquatting? And for the philosophers, how do these hosts expect to maintain a good reputation when they engage in such unscrupulous business practices?"

3 of 68 comments (clear)

  1. Related Situation by nlh · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I was involved in a somewhat related situation. Here's what happened:

    I used to work for a software company. I registered a domain for that software company through register.com and *MY* name was on the domain registration. I never actually transferred ownership to that software company, but leased the domain to them under a verbal arrangment. Their website was handled by XO and the domain registration was still handled by register.com

    Software company gets acquired, and the new owner doesn't want to use the domain. Instead, appoints some scumbag to try to auction it off. Only problem, of course, is that the domain is still owned by me, and it was never theirs to sell.

    Scumbag decides he wants control of the domain and sends a threatening lawyer-writ letter to both XO and register.com. XO AND register.com decide that the whole UDRP thing is just too complicated and simply lock me out of the website, my POP account, my register.com domain management account, and everything else related to that domain. Unbelievable. Take my credit card off the account, basically pretened that I don't exist anymore -- EVEN THOUGH my name was on the account, I was paying for the hosting, paid for registration, etc. I called, yelled, screamed, etc. Neither company cared...they just caved to the most scary-sounding letter and "wanted to avoid trouble". Scumbag thought he won.

    So what did I do? Transferred the domain to new registrar (domainmonger.com -- very cool guys who actually respect the UDRP). Luckily, the automated register.com system let that happen, and all of a sudden, the domain was back in my (rightful) hands. Lots of people got pissed off when all of a sudden they realized that many lawyerletters had changed hands (and money was spent) and they had nothing to show for it. Tried the same approach with domainmonger, and got a simple "please refer to the UDRP if you wish to dispute ownership of this domain" right back in their faces. Upon realizing that a dispute takes time and money, they quietly shut up and went away.

    --
    Ferrari and other exotic car rentals in New York
  2. Legal Doctrines that should win by grolaw · · Score: 2, Interesting

    1. Copyright of all material on the site remains with the author.
    2. No Electronic Theft Act and DMCA both could apply.
    3. Attack "boilerplate" contract terms as non-bargained for contracts of adheasion.
    4. Quantum Meruit (for what it's worth); a method of retaining your work product.
    5. Promissory Estoppel: We HOST YOUR DOMAIN does not mean we host our domain that YOU BUILT.

    Three of these actions can be brought in courts of limited jurisdiction (NOT SMALL CLAIMS), and they can be very quickly decided - but you will have limited the value you assign to the domain by selecting the limited jurisdiction court.

  3. Domain name ownership is a pain in the ass by Audeo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I used to resell hosting to clients and we would register their domains for them and point them at the webhosting servers that we were resellers for. About 79% of those domains we registered in our own names simply to make life easier on ourselves when it came time to pay the bills or make changes. Many of the customers we did this for had so little understanding of what was going on with dns vs hosting and the facts of owning a domain that it was just much simpler to do it this way.

    However whenever a client asked about this or wanted to transfer to another webdeveloper or host we always facilitated this and transfered the domain to their name and worked with the other developer to transition stuff.

    Reputation was everything in our business and we had a very reputable reputation :)