"William X. Walsh" wrote:
>
> Sorry, Paul, but there is simply no reason for the owner not to be
> listed as the admin and every reason for them to be the admin contact.
> The fact is, in reality and in common practice, for the admin contact
> to be considered the owner of the domain name. And there is NO reason
> for the ISP or person managing the domain to have to be the admin
> contact, when they can be the technical contact. The billing contact
> should be the person responsible for paying the domain fees.
What are the compelling reasons for the owner of the domain to be the
admin contact?
> > Not all resellers are out to screw domain owners. There are many, if not
> > the majority, who are reputable companies with a long history of
> > providing excellent support services for their clients who are being
> > hampered from extending that service to domain name management because
> > of the attitude that to do so is to "hijack" the domain. Our clients
>
> It's a fact of life that this is the case these days. It has happened
> enough, is so widespread an abuse, that there is no other way to paint
> it except as unethical.
It may be a fact of life but that doesn't mean that ethical companies
can't provide a good service. The ethical companies are answering
support calls and doing everything that their customers required. The
unethical ones are not. The issue of who the admin contact is doesn't
solve any problems here, the unethical companies make themselves the
admin contact and then abuse their customers trust, the ethical
companies either do or do not make themselves the admin contact but it
doesn't really matter either way because their ethical.
> I have seen no compelling reasons for the owner of the domain name to
> not be listed as the admin, or for the ISP or host to require being
> the admin contact of the domain. With nothing substantive to benefit,
> and everything to risk in the practice, there really is no other
> conclusion to come to.
You don't address the situation I explicitly listed, where a company is
paid explicitly to deal with all aspects of domain management, with the
full knowledge of the client that the company is acting on their behalf
in all matters. We have many clients who just have a PC in their bedroom
and know nothing about the internet but are selling their "hobby" in
their spare time on their website. These clients wouldn't know what to
do with any contact from the registrar and would immediately pass the
matter on to us. In those cases they knowingly and willingly make us the
admin contact.
> If anyone comes to me asking questions about their domain, and I see
> the ISP or whatever, has not listed the registrant as the admin
> contact, I tell them exactly what I said above about the practice, and
> I stand by it.
That's fair enough, we're all entitled to our business models. I'd be
quite happy for you to tell any of our customers what the situation was,
it would come as no surprise to them as that's what they pay us to do.
Not all of them of course, some want to be the admin contact in which
case they are but it's up to our customers to decide what level of
service they want and if they want us to take it completely off their
hands then there's nothing unethical about it.
I think you're trying to make it a clear cut issue when it isn't one.
For many years I was a contractor and as such I would often be the
person that had full control of a domain on behalf of a client. The
situation in my case has changed little other than that I am no longer a
contractor per se, but my company still provides the same support as I
did as an individual to my clients, including being in full control of
their domains.
It seems to be the assumption here that the only people selling domain
names are the mass resellers from their web sites. That's not the case,
there are many companies who provide a domain name as part of an overall
support service and are "ethical" in that they ensure that the ownership
of the domain is correct but take over the role of administering it.
There are many IT support companies that do just that, they're not in
the business of selling domain names per se, they're in the business of
providing an outsourced service, a service which includes administrative
tasks such as answering emails and dealing with phone calls.
Paul.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Tue Oct 19 2004 - 23:35:51 EDT