December 5, 2000

11:51 AM

If you tried to switch hosting services only to have your domain held hostage, and if no one else can help, maybe you can hire DomainRescue.
posted by jjg (8 comments total)

If they are able to do the same with registrars, I am sure Zeldman would be interested.
posted by riffola at 12:24 PM on December 5, 2000

Yeah...where were they when the Web Standards Project was being savaged.
posted by bkdelong at 12:34 PM on December 5, 2000

Well, as much more convenient as I know it is, anyone who
allows their webhosting company to register their domain for them, and worse, register someone other than the domain owner as the admin contact, deserves what they get.

Stupidity is *supposed* to be painful.
posted by baylink at 1:03 PM on December 5, 2000

baylink, more context for your statement please. If your making a sweeping generalization you sound like an asshole. It expedites the process of getting the domain live to the world and removes a layer of admin work to have the webhosting company handle the domain registration. Just because a hosting service has poor customer service and shady ways of doing business doesn't make someone buying a domain stupid.
posted by Jeremy at 2:31 PM on December 5, 2000

The administrative ownership of a domain name -- that is to say, the person to whom a domain registrar will listen concerning the management and transfer of that domain -- is an important, valuable corporate asset, to any business which plans to make commercial use of the Internet.

Anyone who is in such a position should be expected to have done sufficient due diligence to realize this, and ascertain that the domain will be registered with the end-client, not the hosting company, as the Administrative Contact.

Anyone, therefore, who gets bitten by this sort of thing, really has no standing to complain. If you don't know what you're doing, make sure you're dealing with people you trust. A commercial relationship does *not* imply this prima facie; in fact, the opposite: if someone stands to make money off you following their instructions, and you don't make sure *you* know all the angles, you deserve to be fleeced.

Was that enough expansion, Jeremy? :-)
posted by baylink at 5:23 PM on December 5, 2000

Yeah. snob. :-)
In baylinks world ill-informed == stupid.
Owning the domain, being the administrative contact, and updating the DNS when you move hosts still doesn't ensure Network Solutions will have their heads out of their asses long enough to update everything correctly. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
posted by Jeremy at 8:21 PM on December 5, 2000

I think the key phrase here is "due diligence" and Baylink is quite right to have pointed this out. Maybe we could distinguish between stupid on the personal level and stupid on a corporate level. If someone leased office space but put the lease in the name of the real-estate agent, that would be stupid, wouldn't it?
posted by rodii at 7:15 AM on December 6, 2000

Good analogy, thanks.

Snob? No, just put on my lawyer mouth. Sounded like that was the explanation you wanted. :-)

But as for the epithet "stupid", yeah, there just is lots of stupidity in the world these days, and it's getting worse.

I can't be getting smarter; that can't be it...
posted by baylink at 8:12 PM on December 6, 2000