It is not right to do this under any circumstances. This list and various trade associations have been full of complaints about Network Solutions not releasing domain names when they expired but keeping them for other purposes.
Now you are doing the same thing. Domain names do not belong to the registrars, just as they do not belong to the people that registrar them. They belong to the genetic public and can be used by the first person to register them as long as they pay the annual fee. The fee does not bestow ownership rights but rights of exclusive use as long as the fee is paid. You are abusing your position as registrar to prevent the public from registering these domain names if they expire, by keeping them for your own use or selling them at a premium. What's the next step, you set up an auction for the domain names, selling them to the highest bidder? Or set up as Snapnames, where you charge $50 for a domain instead of $10? You have made it very clear from the start that the reseller can not pick up the domain names of his expiring clients, citing among other things conflict of interest and the risk that the reseller will not notify the owner of a domain the reseller wants to assume. Since OpenSRS sends out renewal notices, this risk is in spades for you, for as you take the first unethical step of keeping expired names instead of releasing them, it is not that much of an additional step to justify "forgetting" to notify a domain holder of a valuable domain that it is time to renew. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ross Wm. Rader" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Robert L Mathews" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, December 21, 2001 2:13 AM Subject: Re: Re[3]: maxi.org -- an example of the "new" deletion procedure > > According to what I can piece together from > > the accusations and the vague OpenSRS responses, it looks like OpenSRS > > believes they have found a "gray area" of the contracts that they think > > allows them to take ownership of the customer's domain -- the customer I > > got for them -- and make a profit off it without involving me. > > Scott is on vacation, so let me jump in here.... > > His team is attempting to put together a service that will allow our > resellers to offer a product bundle more similar to that offered by other > industry players. Again, I'll note that I haven't kept completely > up-to-speed with what Scott and the gang are up to, but from what I have > seen on this list and gathered around the water-cooler, he/we are completely > approaching this as a channel product. The rub lies with the management > platform. Being a wholesaler, technically, isn't a piece of cake when it > comes to introducing new services (read the exciting new novel "Darryl > Green's Big Adventure in CertLand" for more details). This pilot is very > much a "let's try something, see what we break and then fix it before we get > to the design stage" effort. > > My question for all of you is are you opposed to the project because you > aren't part of the pilot or are you opposed to it because it isn't right to > do something like this under any circumstances (even when it is available to > all of our resellers)? Or is it something else? Understanding this will > really go a long way in allowing us to more appropriately interpret what you > are all saying to us - sort of the most important part of the pilot (getting > feedback I mean). > > -rwr > >
