CircleID

I can’t disagree more. If a registrar puts its own site on a non-expired domain, that would be wrong. But we’re talking about a domain that someone has discontinued paying for. If you stop paying your rent, you get evicted. People that believe grace periods are there for abuse are the same people that pay their credit card bills late. There’s no difference here. 

A simple examination of your rebuttal will easily defeat it.

First, since the purpose of the grace period is to allow the domain name registrant to renew the registration, one has to consider the possibility that they will. Whether for their own planned use or as part of a last-minute sale, if the registration is renewed at any point during the grace period the new year does not start upon payment being submitted - it started on the anniversary date.

Therefore, any period that the registrar disrupted proper resolution of the name and redirected traffic to its own website (also known as "Illegal Intercept") is clearly at the expense of the registrant.

Next, your application of a “rent” analogy is flawed in several ways:

Renters move into property that is created and owned by someone else.  Conversely, the intellectual property rights of a domain name are created by the registrant and were never owned by the registrar. Therefore the registrar’s position is not that of an owner, but rather that of an impartial fiduciary to the registrant and the public.

Acting on behalf of the registrant, the registrar provides a grace period to accommodate the unavoidable difficulties that arise in life and may prevent payment on the exact day it is due.  Acting on behalf of the public, the registrar is supposed to assure that if the registrant does not meet fee payment responsibilities within a reasonable grace period the name is again made publicly available.

It is inappropriate for the registrar to use its position of trust to take over a registrant's domain to advertise its own (related and unrelated) services, or to conspire with other organizations to profit on the re-entry of abandoned assets into the publicly available pool.

Finally, eviction is a process.  Factually speaking, a rental eviction can take much longer than the 45 days provided by the domain name renewal grace period.  During a rental eviction the tenant remains in full control of the property and, unless provided for in the lease agreement, the owner cannot even place a realtor’s sign in the yard.

In conclusion, given their fiduciary role, the current practices or registrars are unjustified, unethical, and without legal basis.

Oh yes, I almost forgot your "credit card" parallel. The punishment for those late-paying people is called a late fee.  In the registration business it's called redemption. 

Registrars provide for 30 days AFTER the domain is expired. If they are 30 days past due, only then do they auction the name off. Instead of normally deleting it like they would have. Either way they would have lost the domain because of lack of payment. The best advise is to keep your credit card update, whois update, and make sure your domain is set to auto-renew at your registrar.

Actually, they take over your domain the second it expires. But the question isn't one of how do I enter my credit card number, it's one of how inappropriate is it for the registrar to use its position of trust to take over a registrant's domain to advertise its own (related and unrelated) services, or to conspire with other organizations to profit on the re-entry of abandoned assets into the publicly available pool.

Why should you ever have to pay a registrar (or their partner) a preiemum for a domain that could be registered with a normal fee if they released it back into the pool as they are entrusted to do?

If I remember it right (and I'm only human), ICANN allows registrars to give a grace period between 1-45 days. But it's not mandatory.

One possible way of viewing this as like person A throwing the trash into the garbage bin. Then person B goes thru it, sees something of interest, and eventually makes money out of it.

One person's trash is another person's treasure.

I'm glad many, if not all, registrars give a grace period for registrants. But I just have a few things to ask:

1. Once a domain expires, change the registrant and contact details to theirs. Netsol does something like this, though not exactly using their company name.

2. This one's supposed to be a no-brainer, but I hope registrars do indicate what happens to expired names explicitly in their legal fine prints.

Maybe not everyone shares this "ideal", but registrants have no rights to their domains except to renew or let it go once it expires. After all, registrars are automatically billed by their respective domain registries to autorenew an expired name unless prior arrangements were made.

Once renewed, then of course registrants have rights to "their" domain names once more.

DZ,

The trash in the garbage bin thing would be a better analogy for a delete request. As long as the domain name is still registered - in any state or status - the registrant is the only one vested in the registration's rights. The registrar has no claim to any rights beyond the agreement for reselling. And, while there is an exclusion in the fine print to opt out of the registrar's reseller scheme, sending the required notice has no effect. This is surely unacceptable under any interpretation.

And how is it that registrant retains rights in their delegation after that delegation has expired?

The solution is simple. The registrar business is competitive. If you don't like the practices of one, find another that better suits your style. Its called free choice - use it!

-ross

If anyone retains rights in a delegation after the delegation has expired, it's the registrant. The "simple" solution is to put names back into the pool so the public can register them for those "competitve" prices.

Again, the question is why would any registrar have ANY right to collect ANY premium on an expired name? This type of operation would be unacceptable in ANY other industry charged with administration of assets.

By the way, it would be helpful if those working at a registry would note thier conflict along with their comments.

The kind of rights we are talking about here are the legal rights given to you by an entity that has control over something that you possess. In the case of a domain name you are given rights to the domain for the period of registration. If you do not pay for the renewal of the domain name then your rights to the domain have expired as well. A registrar could delete the domain the second after it expires if they chose to do so. There is nothing really analogous to a domain name so it is hard to look at other industries, like real estate, and say this is how it should or should not be done. Registrars making money on domain traffic after the domain has expired is something that is happening (and has been happening for a while) so by default it is accepted behavior in this industry until someone challenges the practice in a court of law or ICANN makes new rules that says registrars cannot do this. We could argue who has rights to the domain after expiration until the cows come home, but it doesn't make a difference until someone with authority over the registrars tells them what they can and can't do with a domain after expiration. For all intents and purposes, right now, the rights belong to the registrars if that is what you agreed to when you registered the domain.

Personally, I don't see anything wrong with a registrar directing traffic to a PPC site or some other parking page after it has expired provided that they do give the registrant the ability to renew/redeem the domain if they choose to and that they do delete the domain within the grace period. If you want to keep the domain, keep it renewed. Renewing domain names before expiration is not exactly rocket science. If you were in the registrar business, where profits are scarce, I think you would do the same thing. If you were a publicly traded registrar, where you were responsible for maximizing the return on your shareholders investment, you would almost be obligated to.

As for a registration agreement saying you can opt out of something when you really can't, that's wrong and I assume anyone that opts out may have a valid complaint if their domain keeps getting directed to the parking page. Assuming that is, if a registrant doesn't actually loose their rights to a domain after expiration regardless of that clause in the agreement.

I was about to post my reply until I saw Owen's. Thanks!

One "possible exception" where registrants have a right over expired names is registrar transfers. ICANN's 11/12/04 transfer policy "generally" allows registrants to transfer their expired names to another registrar as long as it's not yet deleted. (and I'm talking about names that were paid and eventually expired...)

But as you said, only a higher authority (like ICANN in this case) can eventually dictate what rights registrars and registrants have especially over expired names. So until otherwise stated, there's nothing really "unethical" or "illicit" about registrars' parking expired domains to their PPC pages or auctioning them off before letting them go.

Just because you haven't been prevented from doing something doesn't make it legal or ethical to do it. While it is true that the kind of rights we are talking about here are the legal rights given to you by an entity - that entity is not the registrar. Throughout the comments added here I have yet to see a legal, ethical, or logical basis for the registrar's actions.

Further, it is NOT true that "If you do not pay for the renewal of the domain name then your rights to the domain have expired as well." As noted by DZ, the registrant - and only the registrant - can transfer their domain to another registrar at any time the name is still in existence - even after it has expired.

It also is not true that "There is nothing really analogous to a domain name so it is hard to look at other industries." Imagine the US Copyright Office assuming the rights to your intellectual property upon expiration and thereafter bidding it off to the highest bidder - instead of entering it into the public domain as they are required to do.

Only four types of person may renew such works: (1) The author, if living, may claim as the author. (2) If the author is dead, the widow or widower of the author, or the child or children of the author, or both, may claim as the widow of the author or the widower of the author and/or the child of the deceased author or the children of
the deceased author. (3) If there is no surviving widow, widower, or child, and the author left a will, the author’s executors may claim as the
executors of the author. (4) If there is no surviving widow, widower, or child, and the
author left no will or the will has been discharged, the next of kin may claim as the next of kin of the deceased author, there being no will. Here we see a legal, ethical, and logical basis for a third party acting instead of the property's registrant.

Of course, renewing domain names before expiration is not rocket science - nor is the keeping of a central database. I have seen no proof that the registrar business has scarce profits and even if there were, that wouldn't provide a basis for registrars reselling intellectual property they have no claim to.

Finally, the purpose of he article was to draw attention to the activity. Someone has to be the first to say the emperor isn't wearing any clothes.

Thank you Talented Fool.

I am a founding member of the
Domain Name Owners Association.
D.N.O.A. is a group of professional domainers united to advance professionalism and ethics throughout the domain name industry.

Of all the possible positions on this issue (and there are many)you have focused on the most relevant.
The loophole.

The injustice of any policy undefined by the governing body is shown perfectly in this issue. Those with whom we have given our trust (and our money) when we Reg a DN must maintain a level of ethical behavior equal to the control they are allowed by ICANN to protect and serve our interests as owners.

The grace period suggested by ICANN is available to both owner and Registrar. It costs nothing to allow owners this courtesy and helps build faith and goodwill between what is becoming an "US and THEM" environment.

The "standard" instance of the drop system is in shambles, now led by the greedy and unfair practice of some Reg Houses to keep the better names for themselves and totally dismiss the original intent of the drop process. This is spreading throughout this industry like a cancer and must be stopped.

I doubt very much the nickels’ made from traffic by stealing our names the moment they become due will pay for the court costs when a class action suit is started over this. They must know what they are doing is wrong and is outside the intent of the original guidelines, but guidelines are not rules and until the rules are defined, greed will prevail over ethics.

Policy must be set by ICANN to eliminate the loopholes.
ICANN is a mediator and will not implement action without complaint.
We need to complain and very soon before this is viewed as the norm.

~ Cyberian ~

Regrettably I've been on the receiving end of an unscrupulous registrar trying to snatch my domain registered with them - they bumped my website off the domain and replaced it with their own site days BEFORE my registration expired!  They did it the instant I applied to transfer to another registrar - and needed their permission because the entire Contact info was in their name! 
I was never able to get them to change the WhoIs and hand the site over to me, despite repeated attempts.
Finally, after 3 years of tolerating this unscrupulous behaviour- and never being able to find a forum for making a complaint which would being results - I abandoned the domain altogether and have rebuilt the website at a similar domain.
Frankly, all these discussion etc are not taking into account the rights of the consumer to be protected from such unscrupulous operators.  What would help would be to have a well-publicised, easily accessible process for reporting the bad eggs and get some action taken.
It should be made simple to report them and rid the internet of these operators who hijack domains. If they didn't exist, we would not need this discussion.

I found this article after having a domain hijacked while I was trying to get it away from ENOM. It's funny because they only wanted to steal the .com.

Anyway, at first they posted porno and then tried to sell it back to me for $800 well before the 10-day grace period.

Now they are back to $99.
I have sent them all sorts of threatening email to no avail.

Do not use ENOM!

iCANN does not approve of this practice at all.
I agree that Registrars have a fiduciary responsibility to the customer and I thought of the realtor comparison too—the realty does not grab your home then try to sell it back to you for a profit!