Re: [tlug] domain registration/deletion problem

[Ulrike Schmidt <ulrike@example.com>]

Oh, my mail made it finally to the list! I thought it had been lost in 
cyberspace for good and that I better rewrite it before posting it again 
when I have calmed down. Then my English would also be more 
understandable or rather I would make a clearer distinction between my 
own opinion and the opinion of the reseller, like in:

>  > My mistake was to take this provider and not their company. They had 
>  > lost so much money because of my provider and still help me.
>
> Don't feel too sorry for the reseller.  
That was the reseller's opinion, feeling sorry for themselves because I 
accused them of irresponsibility and blackmail ("if you don't become our 
customer we will not give permission to restore your domain").

But in the meantime I got an answer in which he wrote that he does not 
admit being guilty of anything, but that that they are taking my case 
seriously and discussed it within the comapny and decided that in future 
they send mails to the domain owners when they terminate the contract 
with a reseller so that the owners can react in time.

Curt Sampson schrieb:
> I'm not entirely clear on this, but it sounds as if there are three
> companies involved:
>
>     1. The TLD registry for .net, which actually distributes (or not)
>     the domain information,
>   
That would be VeriSign, responsible for net Domains?
>     2. The registrar for your domain, which will be one of many who
>     deals with consumers directly, takes their money, and pays the
>     TLD registry to enable the domain, and
>   
From Whois: ICANN Registrar: CRONON AG BERLIN, NIEDERLASSUNG REGENSBURG
>     3. Your Internet service provider (ISP), who provides you with
>     some sort of Internet access and/or hosting, and who also may have
>     registered the domain with a registrar on your behalf, or may be
>     a registrar and have registered it with the TLD registry.
>   
My provider are some (probably former) friends of mine with whom I used 
to share a root server. They did the registration. They are so hopeless 
... I better don't get into details.
> There may be a fourth company, another registrar, involved here too.
>   
Yes, between the Cronon AG and my friend's company there is the 
reseller, the domain-offensive.de. So the chain is: me -> my friends -> 
domain-offensive -> Cronon AG.

> If you could clarify this, and give us the names of the companies (so
> that we can verify that they are what you think they are), it would help
> to solve this problem.

In the whois record is listed:
- the ICANN Registrar: Cronon AG
- Owner Contact: that is me
- Admin Contact: also me
- Technical Contact: my friends
- Zone Contact: my friends

Domain-Offensive is listed nowhere.


Stephen J. Turnbull schrieb:
> The problem is that you are "owner" in the sense of listed contact,
> but you are not owner in any legal sense as far as I know; you are
> merely renting the right to use the domain, and the service of having
> it listed on the root DNS servers.  In fact, I would guess you were
> re-re-renting it from ISP, which was re-renting it from the reseller,
> which was renting it from the registrar, which appropriated it from
> the dictionary according to rules established by ICANN.
>
> You had better get legal advice.  I suspect that Germany and/or the EU
> has certain regulations in place, and that is why the .de domains were
> treated differently.  
For the Denic "the domain owner is the DENICs contractual partner and 
holds the the material rights in the domain." Well, that is my attempt 
to translate: "Der Domaininhaber ist der Vertragspartner DENICs und 
damit der an der Domain materiell Berechtigte." 
(http://www.denic.de/domainrichtlinien.html)
> I would call the EU regulator on these matters.
>   
How can I find out who that is?
> They might not be pleased that the reseller (who is presumably a
> German entity?) is playing these games, just because the top-level
> domain is different.  
The reseller is German, like the registrar, my friends and me. Just the 
TLD is not German.
> I am pretty sure that there is a regulation that
> the affected customer (you, I mean, not the provider) be contacted.
> It might very well conflict with another regulation regarding honest
> dealing with the reseller's direct customer (see below); that's why we
> need lawyers.
>   
I start to understand this conflict and the perspective of the 
domain-offensive. Before I just found it ridiculous that someone not 
listed publically anywhere can block the restoration of my domain and 
that I have to press this information from the Cronon AG.

>  > Also my problem is not only about the restoration fee. My site had quite 
>  > a nice google ranking, second place after the book on which it is based. 
>  > I have several other domains pointing on it now, but still my site 
>  > cannot be found via google (i.e. most of the time, sometimes it happens, 
>  > as I can see in the server log).
>
> For that, you can sue your provider, and you'll probably win the case,
> but will there be anything for him to pay you with?  If it's limited
> liability company in bankruptcy, game over, you lose.  You're unlikely
> to recover legal costs.  There's no way you can blame the reseller for
> this; he probably *legally* is not allowed to contact you, because
> that would be a threat against his actual customer, your provider.
>   
I am afraid there is nothing to pay me. And now that the 
domain-offensive said they will contact their customers in future I am 
also not so mad anymore at them. But still I think things like this are 
not supposed to be legal. And there is a good reason why the Denic 
handles things differently.
> I think the reseller
> is price-gouging, no matter how nice he seems; 
This was my failed attempt in indirect speech. I did not think he was 
nice until the last two mails where he promised to change their handling 
of end customers.
> you should not have to
> pay an exorbitant "restoration fee" since you were not the customer in
> arrears -- you are a new customer.  In fact, the charge for a single
> domain from the reseller is probably much higher than what you were
> paying, but you may be able to avoid that because the reseller
> explicitly split his invoice into a "restoration fee" which is bogus,
> and the original rental fee, which is probably way lower than he would
> charge to a new customer (but that's his problem, not yours).
>   

It seems that there is a fee involved for restoring the domain, the 
Cronon AG wanted 47,40 Euro. The domain-offensive.de wanted around 80. I 
managed to get them down to 47,40 plus tax, that could be what they have 
to pay to the Cronon AG. Not sure about the tax. The fee for the domain 
is their usual fee. Still I am paying
for things my friends did wrong. They owe me much more money than this 
and I doubt I will ever see it again.

So probably I will sue nobody and just have lost time, money and google 
ranking and gained some insights in domain rights (shiver). But maybe I 
should post this case in the internic complaint form 
(http://reports.internic.net/cgi/registrars/problem-report.cgi), maybe 
they will correct this.

By the way, if I understand the following part from the registrars 
agreement (http://www.icann.org/en/registrars/ra-agreement-17may01.htm) 
correctly shouldn't the domain-offensive be listed somewhere?

> 3.7.7.3 Any Registered Name Holder that intends to license use of a 
> domain name to a third party is nonetheless the Registered Name Holder 
> of record and is responsible for providing its own full contact 
> information and for providing and updating accurate technical and 
> administrative contact information adequate to facilitate timely 
> resolution of any problems that arise in connection with the 
> Registered Name.
Confused ...

Thanks a lot for your replys, Uli