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This
website is created and maintained by The Profit Clinic as a free public service
to
small business owners who want their domain names to remain exclusively theirs.
Planning to register
your own domain name?
Learn
from the experience of other small business owners who’ve paid for domain name registrations
carried out by their web hosts or designers, only to discover that those hosts or
designers have retained ownership of those domain names and refused to release them.
In the cases listed here, the clients involved were given no clear understanding
prior to registration that their domain names would not become their property,
despite them having paid the full cost of registration plus, in some instances, an
additional fee to have the web host or designer register the domain name for them.
The
legal position
of those who adopt this practice depends very much on local laws, especially where
no prior notice of this practice is given to prospective clients, or where details
are buried in the fine print of
their
agreements with clients. No imputation of illegality or wrong doing should be inferred
from listing.
The
ethical position
is clearer, however, regardless of applicable laws. While hosts and designers may
legally apply this practice, there is still a clear moral obligation to fully disclose
this practice – not just list it in the fine print of the agreement – so that
clients and prospective clients are properly informed of the practice before registering
domain names through those hosts or designers.
Internic, the domain name registry, has dispute resolution guidelines in place,
but may or may not be consis- tent in applying them. The Internic guidelines can
be found here.
In coming weeks we’ll post details of action taken by people who’ve successfully retrieved their
domain names from providers or designers who refused to release them, along with
suggestions by others on how to retrieve your disputed domain name.
In the meantime, we advise you to check here before you register your domain name
to see if your web host or designer has been reported for implementing this practice.
If they appear on our list, you should discuss their policies and practices with
them (preferably in writing) before you make any decision.
Want
to report a case for listing?
You must be the aggrieved client (or former client) of the web host or designer
involved and you must provide evidence to support listing. For full instructions,
click
here.
Are
you a presence provider or web designer listed here?
Next time, don’t ignore our notices. Find out what you need to do to have your listing
removed… click
here.
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