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What to Do When Your ISP Steals Your Domain?
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?"
Q: What to do when someone steals your domain?
A: Slashdot Them!
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
Back when I was helping a friend with his startup ISP, a few customers just decided they weren't going to pay. Our names were on the domain and the registration, and we were pretty nice about all of this until one of the guys let on that the others KNEW that we'd never turn them off because we were too nice to be in business and that they had all talked and decided if we were going to force them to pay, they'd go with one of the other guys (former friend) that had started an webhosting business himself.
I ended up redirecting those guys domains to porn sites and removing their names from the registration to ensure that it had to come though us.
That was my last task before I decided they were right...I don't like being a jerk and certain sectors in business were not what I wanted to deal with if thats what ya had to be, and I picked up my current university gig (as well as freeing me up for my other consulting gig -- see above URL).
Sadly, my former partner didn't agree with my opinion that he should keep those domain names current so they never could get them back. Joker is like $7 a year, and that would have been about $35 at most...well worth it...about 6 months after this, they started getting their domains back, but without the traffic they use to get.
There is always two sides to these stories...I don't know the other side of the story with the original poster, BUT there is probably something we aren't hearing (even if the guy IS morally correct).
If that is the case, then you don't have a domain squatter. You have theft through deception. Take them to court.
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
BTW, domain name disputes cost $1000 to $2000. So if the ISP is asking less than $1000, that may be your cheapest route out of this mess, as morally repugnant as that sounds.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
I checked the legal garbage at (http://www.olm.net/standardpolicies.html) and there doesn't seem to be any provision about OLM.net keeping domain name rights. Hit them with a complaint, and file complaints with the Better Business Bureau, etc. By the way, since your friend's site seems to be /.'ed, the Service Agreement here (http://www.olm.net/sla.html) says your friend is due some refund because his site is down....
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.
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If you surf down to Score:1 (or visit http://slashdot.org/~sahonen and surf his replies ) you'll find the following:
"Dan Cervantes is the owner of the Big Boy Drum company. The problem is that the ISP won't let him transfer the DNS to the server he wants to move his web site to, actually a web host I run. No, I won't plug it, 'cause we're near our bandwidth limit already."
Since when has a ISP had any control over DNS changes? Why even talk to them about it? Go directly to http://www.corenic.org/ and move the damn thing yourself.
"As much as a refund would be nice, the site was down before it got linked to on slashdot, I think the ISP took it down when Dan cancelled his hosting. But they kept the domain name."
They don't have the domain name. Whois clearly says that Dan does. It sounds to me that you simply don't understand the difference between an ISP and a DNS.
No Zen is good zen
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.
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
Since Mr. Cervantes is listed as the Admin contact for the domain, all he has to do is contact the registrar and change the technical contact for this domain to himself, then he can set the nameservers to whatever addresses/hostnames he pleases, whenever he pleases. Do bear in mind that once you change you nameservers on the domain record, it may take as long as a day or so for the updates to propagate around the planet.