At 6:23 PM -0700 9/5/00, William X. Walsh wrote:
>Again, you argue semantics. We need to look at realities here, Derek.
I think it is you who is missing the reality.
>They could certainly seek legal recourse, and would probably win. But
>do you think that it would be an automatic thing? Do you think they
>would have any notification PRIOR to the act that it had occured? No,
>any action they took would have to be AFTER THE FACT, because the
>admin contact has full ownership power over the domain name, and can
>take these actions without any interaction from anyone else.
>
>Will it stand up to legal challenge? No, of course not. But the fact
>remains that the admin contact DOES have the power to do what you
>indicated, and your point is illustrative of exactly WHY the customer
>should always be the admin contact. A Yahoo certainly has the money
>to take the necessary swift legal action to recover their domain in a
>timely fashion, but that won't always be the case and is certainly not
>the most common case.
>
>The fact remains that as admin contact, you CAN give the domain name
>away to someone for a song, but you will have to deal with any legal
>repercussions later. But you most certainly can cause the physical
>act to occur, and that reason alone proves my point.
>
>Thank you for illustrating it so well for me.
No, William, thank you for conceding the point for me.
Your admission, "They could certainly seek legal recourse, and would
probably win." is the answer to the question. The person in the owner
record _IS_ the owner. Everyone else is simply someone who has been
delegated to act on behalf of the owner in some capacity.
That some people would not feel comfortable delegating the
Admin-Contact authority to someone outside of their company is
understandable. HOWEVER, there ARE companies out there who DO trust
their service provider to handle those things for them.
For example. Widgets, Inc.
Widgets is a company in the brick-n-mortar world. They sell lots of
widgets, but they know nothing but Widgets. They don't know computers
(don't even have one), don't know marketing, don't know anything
else. They hire an outside marketing firm to handle their marketing,
advertising, promotions, etc. [very common business practice, I might
add], and an outside accounting firm to handle their bills, leaving
them to concentrate on day-to-day widget-making.
AdCompany, a very net-savvy company, realizes that the best way to
get the info to the people is to get a web site set up for Widgets,
Inc., so they register "WIDGETS.COM". Now, can Billy-Bob (CEO of
Widgets, Inc.) handle being the admin contact? Hell, no, he doesn't
even have an e-mail address, how can he be the admin contact? The ad
company is in charge of the site. They bring out mockups, they bring
out a laptop and show BillyBob what they have in mind. BillyBob is
impressed (although he tries to talk to the mouse).
AdCompany tells the registrar, "Hey, our customer is buying this
domain WIDGETS.COM, but we're taking care of the domain, and will
handle the administrative issues. We're having it hosted at
WebHostingInc, and they're handling the DNS and such, so make them
the technical contact, and send the bills to AccountingCo, which is
Widget,Inc's accountant."
A perfectly logical situation. One which, in fact, happens ALL THE
TIME (although Widgets, Inc., isn't always as Luddite as they are
described in this example).
D
