Who Owns Your Domain Name??

Registrant Holds Client’s Domain Name Hostage!

Oh boy, issues like the one I’m going to write about today really make me angry. I dislike it intensely when honest, trusting people get completely taken advantage of by unethical people!

For this post, I am specifically referring to business people who hire someone to give them an online presence – which usually means they hire someone to design a website and “put it on the internet” (upload to the server). More often than not, the business person has NO CLUE about what it takes to get a business website up and running, nor how to “get” (purchase) a business domain name, etc. So of course the business owner must hire someone to do these things for them.

Often, this means the person they hire will also handle the actual registration of the domain name; possibly provide the hosting service; and most probably will provide webmaster services.

A Real Life Story …

I was recently contacted by someone who is interested in my SEO services. I will refer to this person as “Dr. B. B. Fred”. During the course of our conversation, I was told that Dr. Fred has had a website for quite a number of years, but was thinking about changing the domain name.

I asked if he wanted a domain name change in order to be more targeted or specific in some sort of way as compared to the domain name he was currently using. He said he wanted to change it slightly, feeling the “new” domain name would be better sounding and easier for his patients to remember than the existing domain name. I could partially see his point and we briefly discussed that issue.

So I asked him “Do you or your webmaster understand what will be entailed in moving all the existing web pages onto the new domain, and how to implement redirects?” His answer really surprised me – not about redirects and what is entailed in changing domain names – but about his webmaster.

Get this! He told me (I’m keeping it brief here) that he found out that the individual who had originally registered the domain name, whom he was not using for webmaster services any longer, was holding the domain name hostage and would not relinquish the domain name unless Dr. Fred paid a tidy sum of $4000.00!! Let me mention here that the “hostage” domain name just happened to be his name “drbbfred.com”. Yes indeed!

Who Owns a Domain Name?

REGISTRANT = Official owner of the domain name

So, Dr. Fred was obviously angry! He couldn’t believe this person whom he had trusted (and paid) to register his domain name and provide him a website could be doing this to him. And let’s say that Dr. Fred wasn’t willing to fork over $4000.00 to this jerk. Dr. Fred said “It’s MY name that I used to brand my website. I’ve been paying for it year after year – five years in fact! It’s MINE, not his!”

Not to mention who else would want it?? Come on … bbfred.com? Why is this domain name worth $4000.00?? It’s not like Dr. Fred is making millions of dollars (through his website) because he is a celebrity doctor, nor is the domain name such a hot commodity that it would be worth stealing away from him!!

As a matter of fact, his website was so terribly lacking in basic search engine optimization, that it is 99% invisible to the search engines and out-ranked by similar themed websites. Thusly, the traffic to the website is nothing to jump up and down for joy about. (Don’t have a site like Dr. Fred’s – get my free SEO tips on how to tweak your website for higher rankings.)

So, there must be some deeper reason the registrant isn’t willing to give him his domain name. Anyway … yes, I guess unscrupulous people are all over the place, aren’t they?

Now, I have no idea why the individual feels the need to not politely sign the “change of registrant” form which would allow the domain name to now be registered in the good doctor’s name, but the person won’t. I asked him, but he was a bit evasive with his answer. So I figured something else was going on, and it wasn’t my business. After all … Dr. Fred wasn’t a client, he was a prospective client.

He thought he would just take all the existing content and copy it over to his new domain name and then he’d not have to worry about “bbfred.com” being held hostage. And that he’d then have a leg up over the unethical webmaster. “Oh no”, I told him. I discussed that he couldn’t start up a new site which contained all the “old” content from the first site. There’d be a mess in more than one way AND major duplicate content problems in the search engines.

But back to the point of this post today. Bottom line … that person owns Dr. Fred’s domain name. Period. That is how the law sees it. (At least for now.) That is how it is registered.

What to Do if You’ve Trusted Someone Else to Handle the Purchase, Registration and Yearly Renewal Fees for Your Domain Name

I highly suggest you make sure that your name (or someone’s you trust implicitly) is listed as the “registrant”. Even if the yearly domain registration fee is handled by your webmaster as example, I still advise you make sure YOUR NAME is listed as the one who really OWNS the domain name.

Not sure how your domain name is registered? Here’s one easy way to check. Go to: www.betterwhois.com/. Type in your domain name; click the “Search” button; you’ll be taken to the page of information about the domain; and then scroll about half-way down that page. You’ll see “Registrant” with the person’s name, address, phone number and such listed right there.

If YOUR name isn’t listed, then right under the Registrant information, make note of the “Registrar Name”. A registrar is a company that has legal rights to register domain names with the proper agencies. An example of a registrar is GoDaddy or Yahoo!.

Also, the registrar is who you pay each year to keep your domain name actively listed. (There are intermediary agents referred to as resellers, who are also authorized to sell domain names. You might have purchased a domain name through a reseller, thusly you’d pay them your annual fee.)

What Steps to Take to Become the New Registrant

If your name isn’t listed, I encourage you to pick up the phone and ask the other person if they would be so kind as to sign the domain over to you. If they say “Sure, no problem!” … great! All you need to do is contact the company listed as the registrar and find out what you need to do to make the name switch. (Many companies have an online form that can be filled out with the information for the changes, and that’s it. Your name is then officially listed as the new registrant.)

If the person who holds your domain name isn’t willing to remove their name as the registrant … well good luck! Depending upon how much that domain name means to you, and/or many other factors, you may want to resort to legal means to try and get it back. But that is a whole other subject that I may address at another time!

Disclaimer: “Dr. B. B. Fred” and “drbbfred.com” have been fabricated for this post. “drbbfred.com” has been used for explanation purposes only, and to my knowledge is not legally registered to anyone at the time of this posting.