Slashdot Mirror
Experience with Fighting Domain Farming
Lost_my_regs writes "I had a .com domain name relevant only to me, no legal trademark, registered and hosted at a provider that went bust. When attempting to re-host the domain I discovered, to my unpleasant surprise, that the domain is now registered by a domain farming company (name removed). My question is: Is there any way to claim back my domain?"
Domain farming causes me no small amount of anger in principle, but it recently bit me, as well. Due to problems with my registrar (joker.com--which after years of service without complaint I now would recommend NO ONE use), a domain I managed for some one else was snagged by a domain farmer.
This was upsetting enough by itself, but what really caused me to become enraged is that the same company that bought it and sold it back to me [i]IS A LICENSED REGISTRAR[/i]. Granted, they do it under a couple of different names, but it's quite clearly all the same operation, or at least willing co-operation. The fact that this sort of thing is allowed to go on shows that either ICANN allows it or is completely inept in regulating it. The only question is whether they are incompetent or swayed by money at some point in the process.
Sadly, as long as pretend-to-do-no-evil giant Google keeps encouraging and rewarding these shady practices, us regular guys are utterly powerless. It would take a tremendous concerted effort to outvote Google with our pitiful dollars.
.com version -- wasn't commercializing it in anyway. Let the registration lapse and it got vacuumed up by a domain farmer. I just registered the .net version. Then after a year, after the farmer probably lost money on it, the .com domain was free again and I re-registered it for a longer period with (what I hope is) a more reliable registrar, Yahoo.
I agree this is the crux of the problem. I wish Google would move against domain farming, but as parent points out, they're the industry leader.
Had a similar thing happen to me with a domain which I was using much like the OP. I had the
Innovation makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old regime... -- Machiavelli
Names are registered with Registrars. Hosting is done at ISPs. Are you saying your now-defunct ISP where the site was hosted was also a Registrar?
If that was the case, when your site was registered was it in your name or the ISP's name? Who was Technical contact, you or the ISP?
If it was in the ISPs name and they went defunct and were bought, then you're screwed.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Back around 2000, my domain name, www.sideshowfreak.com, was at Netcom, and they somehow managed to drop it in the middle of a back-end transfer. I found out two weeks later when my emails stopped coming.
I did what you suggested, asked nicely, offered to double his transfer expenses, explained that I was setting it up for some friends doing a circus.
He was a total and complete jackass. Hurling obscenities, suggesting unreasonable prices ($100,000). I gave up. It wasn't worth the effort or the agony. I did manage to call his mom, who had the phone number that the account was registered to - the guy was in college and didn't have a phone. The poor woman sounded like she had had this conversation dozens of times. "Please, I don't know why my son is doing this, can you speak to him and ask him to stop, I'm getting so many calls, he's just out of control..." Eventually he anonomized the whois.
That domain name is STILL hosted by a domain name farmer - don't know if it's still him. I expect whoever it is uses some metric of number of hits to determine how valuable a name is, so listing it here might bump up its value.
Domain name farming should be killed. If you're actually using a domain, fine. But if you're just holding it waiting for someone to pay an unreasonably high price, someone with a legit claim (say, the previous owner) should be able to snipe it back.
If the domain was owned by you, and you haven't signed any forms to transfer it, then you should ask your registar to please show you the document signed by you that approves of the transfer.
If they can't show it, then threaten to sue and then sue.
Registars need a signed transfer document from the owner to transfer domains. However if the domain was never on your name anyway then your shit out of luck.
A few months back this even got stricter because domain squaters where sending out transfer forms to companies with a bullshit letter that they should sign it. (it still amazes me that that actually worked) So now a days you can also lock your domain name, which means that before the domain can get transfered even more hoops have to be jumped. And i believe depending on where you are, theres a quarantine time, before the name can be released again.
I was wondering myself about how this happened to the poster. I assume they used a host and ALSO used the host to do the domain registration.
I've always used a separate registrar from the hosting co's. The sad fact is every jerk in the world is a hosting provider nowadays, but you know some hosting co's and registration co's aren't going out of business any time soon. Sometimes that means spending $10/yr instead of $6/yr for the domain, and then do your bargain hunting for the hosting. The name can be important... where it's hosted is a much more flexible affair.
So to the poster... make it a lesson learned, you're not getting the name back.
The most important part, perhaps, is that there are reasonable ways to make sure this doesn't happen... WE DON'T NEED MORE RULES AND REGULATIONS!
A friend missed renewing her domain and it was snatched up instantly by a farmer who wanted her to make an offer to reclaim it. it was definitely a unique name that would be of no use to anyone who didn't have her (very unusual) name and her line of work.
A lawyer friend sent a letter to the new owner, basically saying the obvious: you have no use for this domain, and you need to give it back or we'll come after you.
The company returned the domain to her instantly, with apologies for their "mistake".
I'm sure the letter arriving on stationary from a huge, powerful international law firm didn't hurt.
Anyway, what they are doing is obviously cybersquatting, which is illegal. And if they're trying to make a quick buck here and there, they certainly can't afford to defend themselves against thousands of lawsuits.
there is only the door, the door, the door.
If I let one of my domains expire, it's really none of my business who or why it gets picked up afterwards. All I need to know is that I let it expire.
If I don't like that GoDaddy picks them up after expiration... then I shouldn't use GoDaddy. If I use GoDaddy, and it gets picked up by them after I willingly let it expire, it really isn't your place to complain that you can't have it. It was never yours, and you're not entitled to it. Sorry.
The fact that someone bought the domain you want and put ads on it may tick you off... it's happened to me... but I don't think it's illegitimate. So long as they're paying for the name and hosting, I don't get to cry foul. Similarly, if I buy a site and put a lame site up that maybe only three people in the world are interested in, tough... that's my business.
Again, we do not need more rules and regulations.