Theoretically, you could change the ownership and contact information to
something fictitious, so they no longer "own" it. In the US, at least, if
the owner listed in the WHOIS cannot be located, any legal action would be
against the name itself ("in rem") and the "previous" owner would not be
involved. I am not a lawyer (much less one familiar with German law!), but
I am not aware of any cases where a "previous owner" has been sued in a
domain name dispute. (Of course, a court could compel a registrar to
provide proof of who originally registered the name, but I have not heard of
one doing so. I wonder if NSI would even be able to provide such proof,
given their apparent cluelessness.)
I say theoretically, since this would be a clear violation of the
registration agreement. But then, maybe such a violation would be cause for
terminating the registration - the original goal. Regardless of what the
registration agreements say, there are a LOT of domain names currently
registered with fake contact information.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Florian Effenberger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, February 25, 2001 12:34 PM
Subject: Re: (IMHO) important feature: domain deletion
> Hi,
>
> > I have a number of domain names I would like to delete, but it isn't
> worth
> > bothering support about, so I'll just set them to expire without
> notice
> > (sort of a slow deletion).
> Well, in Germany, law is not soo easy, a lot of guys are trying to
> make money out of domain names they claim. So sometimes you just can't
> wait to until a domain name expires, you have to INSTANTLY delete it.
>
> And if a customer wants to delete his domain, I can't tell him "let
> him expire" :)
>
> Thanks,
> Florian
